We’d known for a while that some helicopters had been wanted to take the crew and actors out to a place called Port Waikato, and that the reason for that was that Weathertop was to be found around there somewhere. A look on the map revealed that there were the intriguingly-named ‘Limestone Downs’ in that area, as well as the mouth of the Waikato, NZ’s largest river. I wanted to see if the area would yield a likely backdrop for the Grey Havens too. Thorongil’s visit to explore NZ proved a perfect opportunity to scout around.

Port Waikato wouldn’t make any kind of a Grey Haven, we decided when we arrived. It’s pretty in an undramatic sort of way. Green rolling hills, kids playing round on a wooden jetty, a sandy tidal estuary, lots of fishing.

We asked the locals at Port Waikato what they knew about the filming.

They said Peter Jackson, the hobbits, and (they thought) Aragorn had been there briefly.

All they could tell us was that the crew had come out for a short time to use a strange mushroom-shaped rock on some farmer’s land. The rock was as big as a house, apparently.

Filming took place during the day, I believe. How that all ties in with the set we’ve seen in the preview, with the ruined pillars and so on, I don’t know. It looks like they might have filmed the hobbits and Strider before they found their campsite or the ruins on the hilltop, and before it got dark.. Nobody we spoke to thought there was any set built out on the farm, so perhaps the landscape was used as the Weather Hills and the party was filmed approaching Weathertop during the day.

We rang the farmer. He said we’d need a four-wheel-drive farmbike to reach the place, or it was an hour and a half’s walk, and he wasn’t keen to have us there, so we left it. We did drive to the area and take some photos of the weird limestone outcroppings we saw. Maybe they’ll turn up in the background to some shots.

Shortly after admiring the ‘contains many hazards’ sign I walked over some flat grassy ground to take a photo and fell straight into a series of concealed sinkholes. That’s typical limestone country, I guess.

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