Here's a Throwback Thursday pic- from my trip to New Zealand 16 years ago. We had our annual LOTR viewing over the holidays and it prompted me to pul out my old Location Guidebook for the movies. I don't think this particular locale was used in the movies, though there were certainly similar terrain in some scenes, notably where the Fellowship is first set upon by crebain from Dunland. According to my guidebook, though, that scene was filmed in Kahurangi National Park, near Mt Olympus. My photo was taken, if memory serves, at a place called Kura Tawhiti. Now with Google Maps I can actually look this stuff up.

It's also relevant because we have some concrete news about the Amazon Middle-Earth show, which is now confirmed to be set in the Second Age and deals with the rise of Sauron. Looking forward to that. The early days of this blog were very focused on LOTR stuff, as were the early years of my life.