Lord of the Ring's Trilogy...

My backpacking trip seemed to be inextricably tied-up with the Lord of the Rings. I read the Lord of the Rings when I was about 14 years old and very much enjoyed it. I first saw The Return of the King in Ko Tao in Thailand. It was in a bar and somebody had videoed the film in a Thai cinema so it was full of chatter and Thai subtitles.

After travelling for many months I ended up in New Zealand where the three films were shot. Somebody swapped books with me and I ended up reading Lord of the Rings again and hiking in the very places it had been filmed.

The owner of a hostel in Hastings invited me to an evening watching The Return of the King with her again. New Zealand has benefited greatly from the Lord of the Rings - there has been an increased interest from people buying second homes and relocating there. The owner of the field where Hobbiton was set simply let the field return to its natural state not realising the potential and interest visitors would have in seeing it. The last I heard was that they were going to try and recreate Hobbiton there.

I watched the second installment The Two Towers on Christmas Day in Las Vegas - a depressing place at Christmas - I kept hearing "Do they know it's Christmas", when I looked around at all the other visitors I wasn't sure they did...

After my travels were over, I moved to Birmingham (England - not Alabama) where I worked in a building which stood in the very spot where Tolkien had once lived. From the bathroom window where I was living I could see the two "Follies" which were said to have inspired Tolkien's two towers (Perrott's Folly in Edgbaston is the main one). I saw the final installment The Fellowship of the Ring at the local cinema - about 100 metres from where Tolkien once lived.

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BY: Sam