26: Road Trip Through Middle Earth and War of the Rohirrim

[00:00:03] Son Embamaan Steakers Remaster Evelance All Middle-Earth knows the tale of the war of the ring, but 200 years before that showing There was an older tale. Arise! We come with an offer to strengthen Rohan. Hader, daughter of Helm. I, Wolf, seek your hand in marriage.

[00:00:34] Our fathers speak as if I were not even in the room. I do not want to marry you. You do not seek an alliance. You seek a throne.

[00:01:21] Greetings Hobbitses, Elveses, Riders of the Rohirrim and Middle-earth Wanderers. Welcome to our podcast. I'm Anne Wynne. And I'm Penny. And this is The Cast of the Rings, episode 26. In this episode, we're going to be discussing all kinds of stuff. We're going to catch up because it's been a little while. And we'll reminisce on Penny's recent trip to visit me in Middle-earth. We're going to share our thoughts on The War of the Rohirrim movie and discuss some Rings of Power news.

[00:01:52] It has been a while. I think like six months or something since we recorded. Yeah. Which is crazy. A lot has happened in six months. That's so true. So much to even talk about. But it's really great to be back with you again. Once again, I feel like, you know, you were just recently here. So we got to hang out a lot. And I always get to hear you on all of your other podcasts. So I feel like we spend a lot more time together than we probably actually do. So it's good to be back together in the microphones.

[00:02:22] It is, really. And I have to say that visiting New Zealand and seeing, you know, your beautiful country was a once-in-a-lifetime kind of amazing experience. And I don't think it would have been half as much fun if I hadn't had you there and your very, very hospitable family. I think that the things that tourists do when they visit your country are probably fun.

[00:02:49] But it's not the same as traveling around with someone who knows the places and is local. And having a family to sort of ground you so you don't have those moments of feeling like, I'm just a floating-around tourist. Like, it just makes it better. That's so cool. Oh, thank you for that. No, it was just amazing to have you here. And if some people may or may not know, I used to be a Lord of the Rings tour guide.

[00:03:13] And I used to take groups of people around New Zealand on two-week tours, visiting all the Lord of the Rings locations. And it has been a while since I did that. So it was actually really fun to go to some of these locations with Penny. And a lot of them were new for my family as well. Well, my husband's been to all of them. But some of them were new for my kids too. So it was just really fun to get to re-experience them all together. And, yeah, it was incredible. We had amazing weather while you were here. It was autumn.

[00:03:41] The absolute peak of autumn. The colours were incredible. We had beautiful, warm blue sky days. Nice, cool, crispy evenings and mornings. And, yeah, it really held out for us, which was amazing, wasn't it? It was fantastic. I could not have ordered better weather if I had put in a request. Yeah, so good. Well, shall we get into our trip? I think it would be really fun to just go over and reminisce about the places that we went to. And hopefully some of the listeners will be keen to hear about some of the locations.

[00:04:10] We started in Dunedin, where I live, and got to show Penny around, a little bit around our local area. It was Easter as well. So the Easter Bunny visited, which was kind of cool. What did you think of Dunedin, Penny? I thought it was, first of all, a really cute-sized city. Like, the general size of it felt very manageable. You know how New York City, when you first go to New York City, you're like, oh, my God, I could never?

[00:04:39] Dunedin, and I was like, this seems like a place I could completely settle into and be happy in. It's beautiful. It's right on the ocean. And it's surrounded by these hills because it's, like, sort of inside a volcano. So the crazy thing about it is how hilly it is, right? Like, you never go anywhere without either going uphill or downhill, probably both to get to wherever you're going. And at one point we were driving around, and you're like, oh, that's my son's high school or was or something like that.

[00:05:08] And that's where he played soccer. And I'm like, but that soccer field is on a hill. And you're like, no, it's not. And I was like, that's a visible hill. And you're like, oh, that's not much of a hill. This is New Zealand. Everything's a hill. And I was like, oh, my God, just our entire view of, like, geography and the shape of the world is different because your country is so hilly. Like, there's so many mountains. I mean, geographically, it's kind of new. You know, like, however many millions of years old it is, whatever, but it's still being formed.

[00:05:37] There's two tectonic plates pushing into each other and forming this country into these sharp, spiky hills. So wherever you go, there are those. And then I took you to Baldwin Street, which is the world's steepest street. So that was cool. We didn't go all the way up and down, but we did take a little jaunt at the bottom part of it. It was amazing. Like, for a lot of listeners who are American, you've probably been to or seen San Francisco and some of the really big steep hills that they have there. Baldwin Street puts those to shame.

[00:06:07] It's taller and it's steeper. It was amazing. It was like, it reminded me of the time that I climbed Mount Washington in New Hampshire or Mount Vesuvius in Italy. Both, like, just very, very steep and very, very tall. Yeah, like most steep streets in the world, you can do, like, a hill start. Like, if you parked uphill and you start, your car will manage to start going up the hill.

[00:06:36] You can't do that on the street. It's not possible. So you either need to be pointing downhill or you're in trouble. Yeah, you'll roll backwards. Yeah, roll backwards. That's it. Do they have a lot of car accidents on that street? I imagine they do. They have a lot of students doing stupid things like trying to go down it in wheelie bins or skateboards. And, yeah, it's kind of a bit dangerous. But, yeah. We do have a yearly race. It's called the Jaffa race.

[00:07:03] So we have this type of candy here called Jaffas, which are a little chocolate ball covered in orange candy. And they have every year a Jaffa race. So they write numbers on all of these Jaffas. And then you pick a number. And then they let them all go, like, hundreds or thousands of them. They let them go from the top of the street. And then the first one to get to the bottom, Unbroken, wins the race. So, yeah, there's all kinds of stuff that goes on there. That's incredibly silly. You've got to make your own fun.

[00:07:31] Dunedin really – one of my favorite things about Dunedin was that there's street art everywhere. Like, when we were just driving around the town, everything was closed because it was Easter. But we took, you know, a little tour. And every, like, I don't know, every second block I'd be like, oh, my God, another mural. Another mural. Another mural. And they were all really cool and different from each other. I love street art. I was really excited to see that. That made me really happy.

[00:07:56] And then there was that one day when we drove out along the peninsula and got those amazing views from, like, the top of the mountain looking into the bay and into Dunedin from the other side of the water. And it was so beautiful. It was kind of hard to wrap my head around it. Yeah. I remember telling you that on the tours years ago, there was these two women from the States.

[00:08:23] I can't remember exactly where they're from, but every time we went to a new piece of scenery, they'd be like, oh, my God, Anne Wynne, stop it. Oh, my God, I can't. It's too much. Oh, my God. That's right. So we started doing that on my trip. Yeah, that ended up being every time we go around a new corner to a new vista, Penny would go. Oh, my God. Oh, my God, Anne Wynne. Stop. I can't. Stop. It was so fun. And I would be like, oh, my God, this mountain is so beautiful. And you'd be like, just wait, there's better ones.

[00:08:54] Really early on in our trip when we left in Eden for our road trip, we went past this area. And it was just like kind of flat fields with a sort of little random hill in the background. And Penny's like, wind down the window. I've got to take a photo. I was like, no, but that's not even scenery yet. We haven't even got there. And I was like, it's so beautiful. Yeah, really beautiful. That's so funny. I took like 2,000 photos. Oh, that's so cool.

[00:09:20] Yeah, and I've been slowly making my way through them, you know, calling out the ones that are not good and editing the ones that are good. And it's going to take me a long time to get through them. I've already done some prints, too. Oh, great. Of some of the pictures I took. The first half of my trip before I got to Anne Wynne's, I was in Australia for 12 days. And I took 700 pictures in Australia.

[00:09:42] And I've been sort of hopping back and forth between the two sets of photos, like figuring out which ones I want to print, which ones I want to, you know, do something editorial with. I haven't really completely decided. But if you want to see stuff, listeners, my Instagram is public. So you could go take a look if you want. Awesome. Yeah, so after we left Dunedin, we went for like a five-day road trip around the lower half of the South Island.

[00:10:10] And the first place we went to was Te Ano. And that is one of the biggest lakes in New Zealand. And just a beautiful sort of scenic area with mountains and native forest and just really gorgeous. It's a small town that is kind of touristy but hasn't kind of been overrun yet. So it was quite pleasant and quite nice. And we stayed at a little place just right on the waterfront, which was really cool. And from there, we went into Milford Sound as well, which is not actually a sound. It's a fjord.

[00:10:40] It's weirdly named, but it is in part of Fjordland National Park. And these are all huge valleys that have been carved out by glaciers and then flooded by the sea. So they're these massive sort of steep-sided fjords, really. And it's quite incredible. Like most of the mountains in that little area there, they're about 1,600 meters high.

[00:11:08] So they're basically about a mile high straight out of the water. And then the water, the fjord underneath the water goes down almost the same depth as well. So you're just in this incredible kind of massively steep-sided valley, all these waterfalls and native forest. And we took a boat trip out there, which was really cool. Yeah.

[00:11:28] I mean, I love any boat trip, but it was incredibly beautiful to see the fjords from the sea and not just from a road. And to have time to really contemplate them. I spent a lot of time thinking about the crazy people who were the first people who got there and how brave they must have been to be like, let's hike over these mountains and see what's on the other side.

[00:11:53] Because just driving through those mountains on a very well-maintained road was kind of harrowing. Yeah. And if no one's heard of it or been there before, I highly recommend it, first of all. But you can either fly in or they have, so they have a little tiny landing strip there or you can take a seaplane. Or you can helicopter in or you can drive in. And the drive from Te Ano is still about two and a half hours to get in there.

[00:12:21] And it's massively winding road. They are still open in the winter, but I've been there through there in the winter before where the snow has come down and is sort of like the height of the bus on the side of the road. So you're driving through almost like a snow tunnel and they do sometimes close it for avalanches. It can get really icy in the winter as well. So, yeah, this was kind of the end of the autumn that we went there, like towards the end of when I'd feel really comfortable driving in. But we didn't have any frost and we didn't have any snow.

[00:12:50] So it was actually really pleasant. And you have to go through a tunnel called the Homer Tunnel, which is, it's really steep. It's quite a steeply graded tunnel and it's one-way traffic. So you have a bit of a weight to go through, but it's literally been carved out of the side of the mountain through a mountain by a pickaxe. So it's quite incredible when you drive through there and you pop out the other side and you're like, who had the idea that they could actually pickaxe a tunnel through this massive mountain?

[00:13:21] It's completely insane. It's worth it to get there. It takes a while to get there, but once you get there, it's so beautiful. The boat ride is really cool. And then as we drove back, we had more time. So we stopped along the way and saw some beautiful things, a waterfall, some birds, you know, just some really nice vistas. And I got to spend a lot of time with Anwen and her family. We were all in one car together, which was its own adventure.

[00:13:49] We all fit, but, you know, we were three across in the backseat. And I really felt for your husband because he was just like, just jammed in there with a preteen and a teen. Yeah. We had two cars for most of the trip, but for that little side quest into Milford Sound, we just took the one car so we could all be together. And so I could do the driving and yeah, it was kind of fun. But we had a lot of cookies and we played a few games and, you know, it was pretty cool. Yeah. It was great.

[00:14:17] I mean, I described Milford Sound to somebody as the furthest corner of the world. There's a feeling you have about it. It's like, it's so far away, like when you think about it, like sort of on a grand scale, but then also to get to it is this trek through the mountains. So I think that's the furthest I've ever been away from like home. Yeah.

[00:14:44] I mean, New Zealand in itself is far for a lot of people in the world. And then the very bottom corner of the South Island is the furthest part of the most remote part of New Zealand. And Fiordland National Park is the most uninhabited. You know, there's hardly any people there and there's great stretches of land that nobody has actually set foot in. And it does feel like an epic journey. And it's really cool. Yeah. As long as you can avoid the, you know, 60 or 70 buses that come in every day, it's not too bad.

[00:15:14] But yeah, when we finally did get to the sound, suddenly it was like, oh, here's all the tourists. Like they were all there. There was tons of people. There was like six boats, you know, and we had to figure out which one was our boat and get in line for the boat and all that stuff. But then when we got back on the road again, there was a little bit of traffic. But again, it didn't feel like crowded. And you could tell that nobody lived anywhere near there. There was no houses. There was no apartment buildings.

[00:15:44] There was no malls. It was just forest. Yeah. It's looked the same for thousands and thousands of years. Yeah. It's just, it is really incredible. It's soul changing. And once you're out on the water as well, I think, you know, you've got this big boat terminal and all the buses and all that carry on. But then once you're actually out on the boat and you're on the water, it feels so remote and feels so beautiful and untouched and wild that it's really worth the effort to get there. Yeah.

[00:16:10] I mean, there's a lot of New Zealanders who haven't even been there because it is quite a long way. It's also quite expensive to get the boat. It's quite a big drive that some people aren't happy with that kind of road. But, yeah, I highly recommend it to anybody to go, especially if you visit here. So, yeah. A couple of people I talked to in Auckland were like, you went all the way to Milford. Like, they were shocked that I went to Milford Sound. Like, they were like, but you're an American. Like, how did you even hear about it? I was like, oh, I had a man on the inside. I had a mole. Yeah.

[00:16:40] Most of the people there are tourists. And I remember going to, I went and got a little fridge magnet because I like to collect those. And I went to the boat terminal after we'd gotten off the boat and I got this magnet. And I was like, oh, can I have one of those? And the guy behind the counter was a Kiwini. And he's like, oh, where are you from? I was like, Dunedin. He kind of laughed. And I'm like, you're not used to having Kiwis on this. And he's like, no, not so many. Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah, we met. I met some Aussies on the boat and talked to them for a little while.

[00:17:10] And they were like, you came all the way from. People were sort of shocked. I mean, do you not get very many American tourists? Oh, we get millions. Yeah. I was like, they were like, I can't believe you came all the way here. The Americans I did meet were almost all from California. Yeah. I think Californians have the highest percentage of passports per capita. I think they're much bigger travelers than a lot of other people. Although, I guess in the Northeast, you get a lot of people.

[00:17:39] But yeah, I think that they're more likely to travel to the Pacific, like to Asia and Australia, New Zealand. And because that's closer on their side. Yeah. Whereas like I've met people from California who've been to like every country in Asia, but they're like, oh, you've been to Europe? Stop because I live on the east coast of the US. It's only an extra five hours across your country till you get to the other side and then you can go to Europe. I think it's a mental block or something because people in the Northeast, Europe, it

[00:18:09] feels so close. It's like, especially Ireland. Ireland is so close. It's like five hours from here. Five hour flight. That's really short. The funny part is though, like from LA, it's the same length of time to fly to New Zealand as it is to fly to London. Like it's a 12 hour, 12 and a half hour flight each way. So maybe it just, I don't know, it feels better. Anyway, after we went to Milford Sound, we came back to Te Ano and the next morning we did a really cool jet boat ride on the Waiar River.

[00:18:38] So the Waiar is the river that connects Lake Te Ano with Lake Manapuri. And on that trip, you see four locations from the Fellowship of the Ring. So when the Fellowship are boating down in the Albin boats down the Anduin River, you see four different locations that you can see in the film there. And the thing that was super cool about this was that I booked this trip for us and it was a different company.

[00:19:06] The name of the company was different to the company that I used to take when I took people on the Lord of the Rings tours, but it kind of looks like the same route. So I was like, yeah, I'll book this one. We got there and then the driver turned up, the jet boat driver, and it was Lex, the same guy who had taken me and my passengers on the tours. And I think I probably did 20 trips with Lex back in the day. And it was so cool to see him again. And it was exactly the same tour.

[00:19:32] And he had all the same stories and he had little printouts of the locations from the film, like the screenshots from the film so we could see where we were. And it was so amazingly special to see him again and to do the same trip. And yeah, we had a great time. Wasn't it awesome? He was really excited when he realized who you were. You were like, I think we know each other. And he's like, what? And you explained. And then he was like, oh my God, I do remember you. Like, it was really cute. Because I think when you're a tour guide, you see lots of people, right?

[00:20:00] And you just, you never think you're going to like have regulars, right? So you're a very unusual person in his life. And the tour itself was fantastic. He was really charming and funny. At one point, he started to say something about the U.S. and U.S. politics. And then he sort of turns to me and he's like, oh, I'm sorry. And I was like, have at it. Like, we're a mess. Like, it's fine. One thing I've been telling, a story I've been telling people in around, like since I've

[00:20:30] been home, is how we stopped at one point and he took out a bunch of cups. And he's like, this water is so clean. And he just like scooped water right out of the lake and drank it. And when I tell people that story, and then I was like, you know, and then he passed. We all got cups of lake water to drink. And I tell people that story here and they like recoil in horror. They're like, oh, because so many waterways in the U.S. are so polluted that even if somebody was like, this water is really clean, you'd still be like, uh, let's boil it.

[00:21:00] Yeah, no, it's, it's incredible. I mean, it used to be better than it was in New Zealand. Like you could drink, as long as it wasn't through farmland, you know, like if there was, if there's a cow or a sheep upstream, then don't. But in general, most of the mountain lakes and rivers are completely pure. That has changed. And there's a bacteria called Giardia, which is now present in a lot of the rivers. So a lot of the time people, you know, won't. Um, but that particular lake is completely pure and it was really fun to be able to drink it.

[00:21:29] And I just, I got a big kick out of seeing you drink. I've got, I've still got that photo of you, um, going cheers with the cup. And it was really, really cool. It was so fun. And, um, yeah, so if you, if you guys are ever in, um, in Teano, take the Fiordland jet and, um, Lex may or may not be still doing it. He told me that he's been trying to retire for the last seven years. He sold, he used to own the company, sold it to these new people. They kept him on as a tour guide and he keeps trying to retire, but they won't let him.

[00:21:56] So I asked Lex, how, how many, how many of these trips have you done? And he said about 4,000. So we felt very safe. He knows every twig and rock in that river. And it was just, yeah, it was so much fun. I really, really enjoyed it. It's a really fun tour. Not only is the scenery really beautiful and he had lots of fun stories and it was really cool to have the photos from the film and be able to be like, yep, it lines up perfectly. Uh, but then he would also do this thing that I love when you're on a jet boat, which is

[00:22:25] like, he would like do the like hard turn break thing so that like everybody got splashed in the boat and the boat would like spin around. And it was like the perfect amount of sort of childish fun mixed with, you know, sightseeing of beautiful sedate scenery that made the trip extra fun. And your kids certainly loved that part. Yeah, I think he did a few extra spins for my daughter because she loved it so much.

[00:22:52] A lot of people, when they come to New Zealand as a tourist, they do try jet boating. This particular type of jet, the Hamilton jet boat was invented in New Zealand specifically for our braided rivers. They're very shallow rivers. So they're designed that they can, um, they can, uh, go in water, which is a minimum of 20 centimeters deep. So it's like, I don't know, six or seven inches. Like it's incredibly shallow draft. Um, and so a lot of the places around New Zealand have jet boat trips as, as tourist,

[00:23:20] you know, activities, but a lot of them are quite short and sharp. So, you know, you pay your money and you go and it's like 15 minutes and you do all these spins. This was like two hours or something. This was two hours. So it's amazing because you get the thrill of the jet boat and a few spins, but you also get this incredible scenery and this beautiful river. The river itself is completely clear. You can actually see right down to the bottom. It's sort of two or three meters deep in most places, but you can see the whole, all the water, all the stones at the bottom. It's yeah, it's just so beautiful.

[00:23:47] And we got off at one point and we walked on this hiking trail. I mean, walked on, I don't know. We did like 20 meters, but, um, what's that called? I can't remember. Uh, that, that's the, the, um, the Kepler track. Kepler track. Right. Yeah. That was also really beautiful. I enjoyed that immensely. Yeah. It's a, um, it's a, uh, usually a three day hike. So you can go in. So the first part is like really steep up this mountain.

[00:24:14] And then the second day is like along the tops and then the third day is back down. Um, but they also have the Kepler race, which people run in one day. So I think the record is six hours or something like that. It's insane. But yeah, we, he dropped us off and we had this little 20, 20, 30 meter walk. And he's like, now you can say you walked the Kepler track. That was cool. It was very cool. That was awesome. Yeah. And then after, um, we left Teano, so we had the two nights there and then we, we left.

[00:24:42] And the first place that we went to was just outside Teano. And I can't remember the name of the actual location, but we call it the second breakfast location. So if you remember in the Fellowship of the Ring where, um, the Hobbits and Aragorn are, um, heading on the road and Pippin tries to stop for second breakfast and, um, Aragorn throws him an apple. And, um, we, we, um, reenacted it. It was so much fun.

[00:25:09] Um, Penny filmed it and me and, me and my kids, um, were being, um, Aragorn, um, Mary and Pippin. And, um, we had an apple for a prop and everything. It was just so silly. It was extremely silly, but the kids were so into it. And I, I was laughing like the whole way through. I don't know what was funnier was like, like them not knowing the lines, but trying their

[00:25:34] hardest or like the arguments that Josh was having with us about point of view. He's like, no, if you want it to line up just right, you have to stand in this location and it had points this way. Like he was like getting really, really like detailed about it. And the whole thing was so funny. It was so funny. And we've got some really cool photos of it too. And yeah, it's, it's just really cool location because it's this really springy kind of mossy ground. And then you've got these scrubby trees all around it and, um, you can't, it's hard to

[00:26:03] find the exact tree or bush, although Jacob's kind of thought that he had found it, but it doesn't, it doesn't really matter. All looks the same. And you pretty much stand in front of there and say, what about second breakfast? And that's kind of it. It was really fun. Yeah. Awesome. Water Lakes is, I would have to say my first equal or maybe slightly second favorite location in the whole of New Zealand for the Lord of the Rings.

[00:26:31] I think Edoras still has to be my favorite, partly because we filmed there, but just because it's so exceptional. But Mavora is an extremely close second. It's quite remote. You have to, um, go down a, about another 45 minutes down a dirt road off the main road. And, um, there was a few locations that we found there. So the first one is the edge of Fangorn Forest. So in the two towers, this is where Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli find the pile of burning orc bodies.

[00:26:58] And they realize that Merry and Pippin are still alive after they find one of their wee belts. And, um, and then Aragorn kicks the helmet. And then it's also the place where Gandalf, um, they find Gandalf inside the forest and then Gandalf whistles for Shadowfax. And you get that beautiful shot of the horse, um, coming towards him across the grassy lands next to the forest. Um, so that was, that was pretty cool. What did you think of the edge of Fangorn Forest? Uh, first of all, I was like, wait, we're climbing that hill. And you were like, yeah, we are.

[00:27:28] And like, and when her kids are like, just running up the hill and there's Bryce of me coming along behind, like, we'll be there. Just give us a minute. Like we got up there. It's absolutely gorgeous. And then you were like, let's go into the woods. And it was funny. I felt like I was Gimli. Like, no, no, no, no. We're not going in there, are we? Cause it was like, and I, I grew up in the woods, but like, it was so densely like, like

[00:27:55] branchy and, and twiggy, like right, especially right at the edge where you have to cross over to get into there. Like I was like, I'm going to be a like ripped up mess with my, but it was worth it. We got inside and I was like, oh yeah, I could totally picture Gandalf here. Like, this is awesome. And it was, it's quite dense and, um, and twiggy, like you say, but obviously for the interior of the forest, when they filmed that, that was on a studio and they made it extra

[00:28:21] mossy and extra, like, like really full on kind of scary trees and a bit more ominous. So once you're actually in the forest here, it's not, it is quite dense, but it's, it was quite tranquil and there was a bit of sun shining through the leaves and it was quite pretty. And no ants. We also took, um, took no ants, unfortunately. Um, we did take quite a few of my Lord of the Rings action figures with us. And so we took some photos of them in each of the locations and I've got a really cool

[00:28:47] one with Gandalf, um, the white with the sun behind him coming through the tree. So it looks like that kind of light burst that you see in the movie. And that was pretty cool. That's cool. Yeah. Having the action figures with us was really fun. And I, a little bit, I was, I'm a little bit sad when I got home and I was like, oh, I actually didn't get as many pictures of those as I had intended. Like I should have like been a little more aggressive about like getting down on the ground and taking better point of view pictures, but that's all right. I still had fun.

[00:29:15] It was fun even just to pack the action figures. At one point, Anwen and I are in her living room. We had pulled out this huge box that she had all of her Lord of the Rings action figures in and we were sorting them out on the like living room floor and the coffee table. And her husband comes in the room and he's like, you guys are such dorks. And he was like, so happy. It was like this glee. Like I married a dork. Her friends are dorks. Like this is the best. That's why, that's why we're together. That's pretty much it.

[00:29:44] In fact, well, I think most people know I met, I met Bryce on one of the Lord of the Rings tours. And later he said that one of the moments that he fell for me was when I pulled out the action figures. So yeah, there's a story behind that. I have to say you brought it up. So I'll talk about it. Anwen and Bryce's love story is really adorable. And traveling around the, you know, to these different Lord of the Rings sites with them

[00:30:09] was really fun because Anwen would occasionally be like, oh, this is where we were when I first noticed that Bryce liked me. And then it would be like, this is where we were when I thought I liked him back. Like it was, it was like reliving your love story at the same time as reliving these moments from this movie that I love. And the whole thing was just really incredibly cute. Oh, thank you. No, it was so much fun. It was, it's really cool. And yeah, like we've been back to quite a few of the different locations, but that was

[00:30:39] the first time we'd been back to Mavora since we did the tours together. So 20 years ago. And yeah, it was really special. And then the second location at that spot is on Mavora Lake itself. And this is where Boromir is killed by the Uruk Hai in the forest there. And then Frodo escapes with Sam across the lake at Ninheathawal. So that's what they often call the breaking of the fellowship location.

[00:31:04] So the very end of the first film when they escape and Sam tries to stop Frodo and then he almost drowns and Frodo pulls him back into the boat and he says, don't you leave him Samwise Gamgee. I don't mean to. And it's all emotional and special. And we played the soundtrack on the phone when we were there and we had the little action figures. And it's just an incredibly beautiful, tranquil, amazing location. It just looks exactly like in the film.

[00:31:33] There's a sort of small campground to one end, but when you're on the lakefront itself, you can't really see any civilization. And it's just incredible. It looks just like in the film. Yeah. And we had a little bit of a difficult time getting the boat to stay afloat. It kept tipping over and dumping Frodo in the water. And the whole experience was really very silly. And I wanted to, like, I was sort of like, oh, I kind of wish we were camping here.

[00:32:00] Like, it seemed like it would be a really beautiful place to wake up in the morning. Yeah, I would love to stay there. I've never stayed overnight, but I would definitely love to. I think it might be more of a camper van trip than a tenting trip, though, because there are so many sandflies in the winter. Not so bad. But sandflies are a little black fly here in New Zealand that's kind of like a mosquito, but worse. And there are just clouds and clouds of them in the summer. So I think it might be a kind of wintry trip. It wasn't too bad when we were there. So that time of year might be okay.

[00:32:30] But yeah, it's just gorgeous. Absolutely gorgeous. And yeah, it's only, I guess, if you came from my house, it's only about two and a half hour, three hour trip. So it's pretty close. Yeah, that's not bad. For me, 28 hours. But yeah. And then we went into Queenstown. And when you drive into Queenstown, I don't know about you, Penny, but I get that feeling of, oh, damn it, we're back to civilization.

[00:32:58] Because Queenstown is, it used to be a town of like 10, you know, 8,000, 10,000 people, like a small town. And now there's something like 40 or 50,000 people there. And it's just packed. And because it's the geographical location is right next to this lake, between lakes and mountains. So there's very narrow roads and little areas that you have to drive through. And the traffic kicked in. And what would normally have taken a five minute drive took us like 30 minutes to get into the main part of the town. And yeah.

[00:33:27] What did you think of Queenstown overall? It's a very cute touristy town, right? It has, there are, a thing I've discovered in my various travels around the world is that seaside towns and lakeside towns have certain common qualities. And there's, there's like a global thing about a little tourist town where you're like, okay, there's going to be excellent ice cream. There's going to be this kind of restaurant.

[00:33:56] There's going to be this kind of, you know, tchotchke store. Queenstown was like a little bit of an upper end version of that. Like I've been to much more scrubbier ones, but Queenstown is pretty swanky and had a lot of like luxury stores. Like the walk between like my hotel and where we met for dinner. I walked by like a Louis Vuitton and like all these, you know, swanky places, but it's really pretty. The mountains around there are super jagged. What are they called? The Remarkables. The Remarkables. Yeah.

[00:34:24] And I booked a hotel room with a balcony that had a view of the Remarkables. So I had my morning coffee overlooking the lake and the mountains, which was really nice and picturesque and beautiful and cold, really cold. At this point in the trip, it had started to be very cold in the mornings and evenings. And so I would be out in my like pajamas and bare feet on this balcony, having my coffee being like, I'm determined to enjoy my coffee on this balcony.

[00:34:54] But we had some really good meals in Queenstown. Oh, we went to, we went to a restaurant called Flame and it was incredible. It was, yeah. You know, those, you go out for dinner and you go, that was a nice dinner. Or you go to these places. That's like, you know, top 10 or 20 dining experiences ever kind of thing. And it felt like that because first of all, we booked a late table, which we kind of had to because we got into town fairly late.

[00:35:20] So we booked the table for 8.15 and then we didn't get seated till nine because they were running late. And then by the time we got our main courses, it was close to 10. So we felt very European. But the food was incredible. It was very carnivorous. But the kids got this sort of surf and turf dish where normally, you know, you'd have the steak and then you'd have like the prawns or whatever on top of the steak. This was like, if you can imagine, you know, like those stands that you have for like a hanging pot plant or something.

[00:35:49] So it's a stand that curves around and then something hangs down from it. There was a long skewer that all of the meat was skewered onto that was hanging down from this kind of contraption over your plate. And then there was like the bowl of fries next to it. And when it arrived, the kid's face just lit up. It was unusual. It was like half food, half sculpture. Yeah. And you had to like kind of like detract all of the meat down from this spike onto your plate. It was really cool. But it was so much food.

[00:36:16] Like we ended up taking doggy bags home and it actually lasted like another whole dinner and a couple of lunches for us. It was so much food. It was a lot of food. Everything was so good. And we also were being a little bit like, because we, the first part of the trip, we were really frugal. And, you know, we did like meals inside our kitchenettes in the hotel rooms and stuff. And, and this was like our splurge moment. So we were like, we'll have one of those and two of those and some more for the table. Like just. And all the cocktails.

[00:36:46] It was great. It was really, really fun. And it was a, it was a South African restaurant, I guess. And Bryce said that some of the food was pretty authentic. Everything was delicious. That was really good. Yeah, it was, it was really nice server. I remember our server was like really cool. Yeah. And it's funny, you can't, you can't find a single Kiwi serving in a shop or restaurant or bar or cafe in Queenstown. Like. No, it's all holiday work pieces. So they're basically, yeah.

[00:37:15] They come to New Zealand, they've run out of money and they have to get a job in Queenstown until they can save up to leave. So everyone's from Brazil or Ireland or, you know, it's incredible. It's actually really fun kind of chatting to people and seeing their story. And then the next day, that was the day that we went to Deer Park Heights. That's right. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:37:39] So Deer Park Heights is this, it's basically this hill in Queenstown that used, it's kind of got like a suburb or kind of houses around the bottom of it. But the main part of the whole part of the hill is private land that's owned by, I don't know who owns it anymore. I think it's changed hands a few times. But they basically, they filmed a huge amount of the Rohan scenes up there for the two towers. So it was the location of the Waag battle.

[00:38:09] So when you see the two towers, all of the refugees kind of leaving, when they've left Edoras and they're on their way to Helm's Deep. And you see them all on the road there. So this is seen where, where Eowyn serves the soup to Aragorn. It's a scene where they're having a bit of a chat and then Gimli falls off his horse. You can see all of the refugees walking around that small lake at the top of the hill. And then you see the Waags attack and Aragorn gets dragged off the cliff.

[00:38:38] So I think there's like seven, six or seven locations up there that you can walk around and find that all signposted. And it's, it's pretty cool. And then it's, it also happens to be like a wildlife park. So there are these massive pigs, there's goats everywhere. There was some Highland cattle, hairy coos. If you've got your Scottish accent on the hairy coos, hairy cows. And there's a couple of bison.

[00:39:05] And yeah, anytime you stopped the car, because you can feed them. So you can, you can buy a little tub of feed and feed all these animals. And that basically you stop the car and you get out and the goats just rampage you. At one point they really scared you. She was like, no, no. And she's like running away from them. They think that it's a game. Like stop running because they're going to chase you. Like it was, oh, it was so cute though. All the animals were adorable and I'm a real animal lover.

[00:39:35] So that was a highlight for me. The Highland cows were so beautiful. They're such gorgeous animals. There was this one funny moment when we were leaving. So there's some points where you're not supposed to get out of your car because you drive, drive over these cattle stops. And so the animals are separated into various areas. You drive over like a cattle stop, so they can't get into that area. But there's a bit where you're not allowed to get out of your car. And we came along down the road and there was a car stopped in the middle of the road. We're like, what are they doing?

[00:40:02] And then we realized that the car was stopped because there was this massive like Highland cow in the middle of the road and it wouldn't move. And it was just sitting there looking at them and they couldn't, it just wouldn't move. And we weren't allowed to get out of the car. So we're like, I guess we wait. We just wait. We just waited. And then all these other animals started coming over to look like there was this massive deer with these huge antlers came over to kind of have a little nosy and see what was happening. And then eventually the guy in the car, he actually did get out.

[00:40:30] And then he sort of, he tried to, I don't know, was he trying to talk to it or what he was doing? But it still wouldn't move. And then he realized that if he backed up, he would just have enough room to get rounded between the edge of this kind of drop off by the side of the road and the cow. So he went round it. It still didn't move. And then we went round it, but it was literally like the horns were scraping the side of it. Yeah, it was so close to us. It's really funny. It was such a beautiful cow too. I remember that one was like golden.

[00:40:57] It looked like some kind of magical, like this is the cow that Zeus would turn into when it comes to earth to like harass women. And like, this is such a beautiful animal. All the animals in that park definitely know that you probably have food for them. They're like, yeah, like you said, the goats just like run right up to cars. I'm like, oh, that's probably not safe. Yeah, that was really cool. We went to the spot where Aragorn gets dragged off the cliff.

[00:41:26] And I got a photo of each of my kids like head first down the cliff with their legs up in the air. And it's one of those, one of those cool filmmaking tricks where you see it from the, you know, the point of view of him going over and it just looks like this massive drop off because you can see these distant mountains in the background. And then you go to the edge of the actual little cliff and it's about, it's only about a meter. Yeah, it's like a four foot drop. So that was pretty cool.

[00:41:55] It was so beautiful there too because of the structure of the land was just, it was a lot of small bumps and hills. And so every different angle was a little different. And the grasses that covered most of the land were sort of gold colored. The way that they look in a lot of times in movies when people are going through a field of wheat and it's all yellow and romantic and beautiful. It was that kind of coloring and sort of wavy grasses out all around.

[00:42:24] And then when we got up to the high parts, there were sort of these little lakes, these like crystal blue, almost so small that I would call them giant puddles. And in these like little tiny valleys made by all these little hills, it was, it was gorgeous. Yeah. We call them tarns here. It's like a mountain tarn. And yeah, it's just like a small, it's, it's too small to be called a lake really. So yeah, we call it, it's a bit bigger than a pond, maybe smaller than a lake. So we call it a tarn. I don't know where that word comes from.

[00:42:54] Later on that day, we went over to 12 Mile Delta, which is where they filmed the Oliphant scene with Frodo and Sam and Gollum where they're cooking up their brace of conies. And then they see the, the Oliphants. We couldn't find the exact location and we were getting really tired by that stage. So we kind of just walked around and went, oh yeah, it's kind of here. Okay. Bye. That was the day I got a migraine. I was like, I need to go back to the hotel. I'm sceneried out.

[00:43:24] It's too much. So that was cool. And we had a pretty restful night. And then the next morning we went to Arrowtown. So Arrowtown is, is only about 15 minutes drive from Queenstown. And it's one of the major kind of gold, early gold mining areas where gold was discovered in that, in that location. And it's a very cute little small town with just one main street. And it is exactly what you'd think of a gold, gold mining town.

[00:43:51] Like it almost looks like a little street in Disneyland, you know, with the wee kind of pioneer shop fronts. But they're all real. It's not made up. It's like that's how that's looked for the last, you know, 150, 150, 160 years. And there are lots of little tourist shops and everything. We happened to be there on Anzac Day. So Anzac Day is, Anzacs are the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps. And they fought in World War I and World War II.

[00:44:19] And our Anzac Day is our sort of commemoration day for all the troops that were lost overseas. And so every small town and every big town that you go to in New Zealand usually has a parade and some kind of memorial. And some, you know, everyone turns out in their dress uniforms and their medals and everything. We happened to hit Arrowtown on Anzac Day. And so it was deserted when we first got there because we got there pretty early. And then the town started to fill up with all these people coming to this parade. And it was quite cool.

[00:44:48] We got to see a few people in there in their uniforms and all their medals and everything. We managed to grab a coffee before the place got overrun, which was quite cool. And then we saw a couple of locations. That's where we were when your son pulled up photos of puppies on his phone and was like, hey, these puppies are available for adoption at the animal shelter near where we live. And I have photos of you guys seeing your puppy for the first time.

[00:45:18] Yeah. So we deciding to adopt a puppy. That's pretty cool. We had been wanting to get a puppy for a while and like a couple of years. And we'd always had various things. We were moving house. We were going to Australia, all these things. And then this trip with you, Penny, was our last kind of commitment of like being away from home. So we decided we'd get a puppy after this trip. And we thought maybe a month or two or three after this trip.

[00:45:44] But yeah, my son's sat there in this cafe in Arrowtown and we found these puppies and went, oh my God. And yeah, four days later, we picked up our puppy. So that's where we found her. It's really cool that you got that photo of it. I had a feeling. I was like, I think this might be a family historical moment. Yeah, there was. And it was funny because he found the one and he's like, there's a puppy. Wait, there's another one. Wait, there's more.

[00:46:14] And there's like seven puppies that were available from the same litter. And they were all completely adorable. She's the puppy you got. Is she like a part beagle? She has kind of beagle-y ears, right? Like, no, they're poised though. She's a mixed breed. So she's a Hunter Way cross. Hunter Way is a breed that was bred in New Zealand specifically to be a working dog on the sheep farms. So they're really intelligent.

[00:46:40] They're bred from across from Border Collie, Rottweiler and Labrador. So they've got a lot of different kind of features from all of those. She does have kind of floppy, little perky floppy ears. Because that's, yeah, I don't know. We don't know all of her lineage. And she's sort of brown and black. Yeah, yeah. So they have similar coloring to the Rottweiler. Yeah, that's a breed mix there. Border Collie, Labrador, Rottweiler. There's going to be a lot of digging. Yeah, yeah.

[00:47:09] She does like a bit of digging. She's going to be a water dog. Yeah, and they love to fetch and they love to round people up. That's their breeding. So, yeah, lots and lots of fun. Yeah, so Arrowtown was where we first saw our puppy online. And we got to see a couple of locations as well. The Gladden Fields where Isildur is attacked by orcs and falls into the river is just filmed there.

[00:47:38] And then also the Bruinan River where Arwen challenges the black riders and then they're overcome by the water being sent down from Rivendell. And, yeah, just gorgeous. You can still go gold panning there in the river. And it's just a really beautiful location. And Arrowtown is really known for its autumn colors. Most trees in New Zealand that are native to New Zealand are evergreen. So we don't have a huge number of autumn colors.

[00:48:04] But around that particular area, a lot of introduced trees were planted. So there's heaps of poplars and willows and larches and oaks and all of the trees that have beautiful autumn colors. And it was absolute peak time when we were there. It was actually the autumn festival time. So the leaves and the colors were incredible. These bright blue skies and then these incredible, like, almost highlighter yellow poplar trees.

[00:48:30] Yeah, there was a lot of yellow gold and orange in the leaves around us. And, again, absolutely perfect, perfect weather. It was so beautiful. And Arrowtown was probably the smallest town that I saw on this whole trip. And but it had this like this would be a great place to honeymoon feel to me. It was like so cute. There was just a couple of restaurants in town and several bed and breakfasts.

[00:48:59] And I was like, I think this would be such an adorable place to spend like an anniversary weekend or a honeymoon or like it's next to this beautiful lake that I assume you can visit that lake that we drove past to get there. Yeah, Lake Hayes is right there. So there's a huge number of wineries. There's, you know, there's a lot of B&Bs, little boutique hotels. There's a big golf course resort there called Millbrook as well. And, yeah, just really cute little restaurants. And it's a gorgeous place.

[00:49:27] Yeah, it is a pretty romantic kind of weekend place for sure. It's really it's really beautiful. And, yeah, we love Arrowtown. It's gorgeous. And then that was that was kind of the end of your trip with us. We drove back to Dunedin and you handed in your rental car. And I remember being at the airport with you and you're like, what's that noise? And I was like, don't worry, that's just a cow. Because Dunedin Airport is like right in the middle of some fields.

[00:49:55] And there's literally cows like right there. You get out of your car. You go, what's that smell? Oh, yeah, we're in the country. And then cow fields. It's so funny because the airport here in Boston is on a spit of lance jutting out into the ocean. So whenever you're outdoors near the airport, it smells like the ocean. It's like there's no animals and it's like saltwater. Yeah, Wellington's like that. Yeah, it was so different but really cute.

[00:50:24] And it's a really sweet, cute little airport. And I was pretty early for my flight. And so I was just hanging out. There's this one area near the gate where there was a bunch of beanbag chairs. And I just like made myself comfortable. I had my water bottle and some potato chips. And, you know, I plugged in my phone to charge it. And a security guard like came up and was like, are you on the whatever flight I was on? And she's like, yeah. And I was like, yeah, I'm just kind of early. And she's like, okay, just making sure. And then she like sat down and chatted with me for a while about my trip.

[00:50:53] And I was like, yeah, the people here are so nice. Like everybody is so nice. Also, the ladies room in that airport is beautiful. I have rarely seen an airport. Never actually never seen an airport bathroom that nice. Not even in like lounges, like business class, first class lounges. This bathroom had like floral wallpaper and like it was just really pretty and clean. I was like, I don't want to leave Dunedin. I like it here.

[00:51:23] It's really well maintained. It is a small airport. We go to all of the major cities in New Zealand. And then it's just again now open for flights to Australia. So you can fly directly from Dunedin to the Gold Coast, which is pretty cool. But apart from that, there's no, yeah, we don't have a runway that's suitable for jumbo or whatever those big planes are called now. They used to be called jumbo jets. What are they even called? Yeah, like international. Air buses or whatever they are. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:51:50] So we can take 737s and that's pretty much it. You can't really get much bigger than that from there. So it kind of limits us. Do you have direct flights to and from Sydney though? No, not from Dunedin. It's too bad. You can from Queenstown, interestingly. But, you know, that's higher volume of tourists coming in from Australia, especially for the skiing in Queenstown as well. Oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah, there was this there was definitely some stuff going on up in the mountains above Queenstown that we didn't we didn't go to.

[00:52:19] But there was like a gondola that went all the way up that looked pretty cool. I was like, if we were here one more day, I would really want to do that. Yeah, that's pretty fun. They have a really cool restaurant up the top there as well. And they have a luge and a bunch of stuff you can do parasailing, paragliding. I never remember which is which. The one where you jump off the mountain and you're attached to a parachute, that one. And that's paragliding. I think parasailing is the one where you're attached to a boat. Behind the boat. Yeah, yeah. You can do that there too.

[00:52:48] Pretty much anything where you jump off or into or over something. Yeah, Queenstown is all around a really very pretty lake, but much more settled and populated than Tiannau. And it offered all kinds of stuff. Like we spent a lot of time sort of near the edge of the lake. That's where like the restaurants were and the shops and stuff. And there were all kinds of, you know, jet boat rides and water jet ski rentals and, you know, lake stuff that you could do there as well.

[00:53:17] And we also saw those, there's this weird like semi-submersible shark thing. It's like a little boat, but it looks in the shape of a shark and it kind of goes under the water. And yeah, it looked sketchy to me. Yeah. No, thank you. Oh, and you know what we did on the way to the airport. We stopped in a couple of really beautiful places, but we stopped at where bungee jumping was invented. Right? That bridge. Yeah. How would I bridge? Yeah. Yeah.

[00:53:45] And Anwen and her son did a zip line. Yeah. And I have video of that. I got to send you. I haven't sent you that video yet, but it was also one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. It was these very tall like cliffs around a river. And the water of the river was like this amazing turquoise color or like a little more green than turquoise, but so beautiful and clear.

[00:54:10] And then there were these high, high gray mountains around it with like lots of autumn colors on them. And I was like, this is like a perfect place. Like it's like a snapshot of heaven. Just amazing. Yeah. Yeah. And there's also a location there, which I forgot to mention, was the pillars of Argonath. So if you remember from the Fellowship of the Ring, when they're going down the river

[00:54:33] and you see the two statues of Isildur and Elendil on the side of the cliffs, that's where they filmed it. So right by the bungee bridge. Like if you look one way, you can see the bungee bridge. If you look the other way, you can see the Argonath location. So obviously the Argonath were digitally added later, but everything else looks exactly the same. Like you described, Penny, it's just these rock walls, sheer rock walls and this beautiful turquoise kind of river in between them. It's just beautiful. Yeah.

[00:55:01] And there's a ton of like vineyards around there and things. That's another sort of touristy area. Really pretty. Definitely. And then after we said goodbye, you went to Auckland. Tell us about that. So I was in Auckland for basically two, well, I guess I was there for three days. I spent the first day just sort of having a walkabout.

[00:55:25] I often do this in a city where I don't make a lot of plans and I just sort of see where I end up if I take a walk. And Auckland reminded me of a lot of cities I've been to and, you know, it was really pretty and nice and it had great architecture, a lot of street art that I really enjoyed, especially by the harbor and some good restaurants. But it wasn't as interesting as the South Island. It just didn't feel like it had as much character.

[00:55:55] It felt a little more international and therefore like generic. I did do the Weta experience there. It's not the original Weta workshops, but it's like a purely tourist place to go to where you get this tour and you get to see a little bit of how Weta workshop does their magic. And there's these interactive exhibits and, you know, you get to like sort of play with the swords and stuff like that. That was that was pretty cool. And I had a good time with that.

[00:56:24] I went to the museum, art museum in Auckland, and that was pretty cool. But the best thing I did when I was in Auckland was I took a day tour to Hobbiton. You get picked up at it was something insane, like four in the morning. And you're in a van, you drive out to Hobbiton. And we stopped a couple of places along the way for just some scenic outlook and to stretch our legs. And you get to Hobbiton.

[00:56:51] And so the story goes that for when they were getting ready to film Fellowship of the Ring, they did a helicopter tour of some of the land areas looking for a suitable place to build Hobbiton in the Shire. And they were looking for hilly, green, open land with at least one really big tree. And they found this place called the Alexander Farm. And they approached the person who owned it, the Alexander family. And they were like, yeah, you can build Hobbiton. They made whatever deal they made. They built Hobbiton. They filmed the movies. Everything went great.

[00:57:21] They left. They took it all apart and they left. And then after the movies came out, tourists started just showing up at the farm and being like, can we see Hobbiton? And the people who owned the farm were like, it's not there anymore. And they were like, can we see where it was? And here, you have some money. And they were like, OK, for money, you can go see where it was. So then when the film company came back and they were like, we're going to make the Hobbit. We want to build Hobbiton here again. The owner was like, well, yeah, in one condition.

[00:57:50] You have to make it permanent so I can let tourists see it. And therefore now Hobbiton is pretty permanent. And it is unbelievable. First of all, it's way more than you think it is. Like in your head, you're thinking like, oh, it's a movie set. They made like two Hobbit holes and some hills. No, it's like 50 Hobbit holes. There's a lot. It's a really large amount of land. You can walk around and up hills and around things.

[00:58:15] There's there's so many different ways that they have tricked it out. They have and they have a whole team of landscapers and gardeners that work year round to keep all of the little like Hobbit gardens and fruit trees healthy and looking good. But apparently for the movie, they like they they sowed different fruits onto some of the trees to get them to be the fruit that they wanted them to be. And some of the trees didn't have quite enough leaves.

[00:58:44] So they made like silk leaves and attach silk leaves to the branches. There's all these stories about the things that they did for the production. But it's it's if it weren't for the fact that you're on a tour and you're with a group of people and there's somebody being like, OK, let's keep moving. It would feel like you were really in Hobbiton because everything you could see around you, you're completely immersed in the vibe of it. And it's 360 degrees. And some of the Hobbit holes, most of them are just the door and the windows and the entrance

[00:59:13] area. But some of them are fully decked out and you can go inside and like lie down in the bed and sit in the chairs and like pick up the newspaper and pick up the plastic food and like look in the mirror, all that stuff. It's like a completely furnished, cozy, short little Hobbit hole. I'm lucky at five, eight. I was able to comfortably walk around in there, but some of the people on the tour were much taller and they had to hunch and they looked really uncomfortable. They banged their heads like Gandalf did. Yeah, exactly.

[00:59:43] It was really cool in there. And and then there is a fully functioning pub. The Green Dragon Pub is a fully functioning pub that you can go and sit down and order a pint and and have a drink and sit by the fire. And I there's four different things you can order. There's like three different kinds of ale and then a cider. I got the cider. It was delicious. And you can buy some bottles to take with you. I didn't think I was I didn't I asked and they said they didn't think I would be able to take them all the way back to the US with me.

[01:00:13] And also that one of the types of ale you can't take on an airplane at all. It explodes under any extra pressure. I was like, OK, well, that's really good to know. But it was it was a pretty magical place. And they also said that they rented out for like weddings and events and things like that. And I was like, oh, it's one thing to take the tour. But like it would be so cool to be here for like a whole event of some kind. I can't imagine. Yeah, they do like a maquis on the on the on the lawn next to the party tree.

[01:00:42] And they do all kinds of stuff there. It's so special. But there's another layer to that story about how how it began that they probably don't talk about on the official tour. But I know a bit of background information. So the the red carpet tours, which is the company that I used to do the Lord of the Rings tours with, they actually have quite a big part in the fact that Hobbiton is a is now a tourist attraction, because what happened was they filmed, as you say, they filmed the the first Lord of the Rings trilogy there.

[01:01:12] And then they took everything away. However, they did leave the wooden kind of hobbit hole frontages. So you had all of the land was still formed. You had all of the hobbit holes that were kind of terraformed to look like like the houses that the hobbits lived in, all the little paths and everything. They took away all the set dressing, except for these white frontages with the round door hole in them. And when we first started doing the tours back in the day, this is like before the this is

[01:01:41] before the two towers came out. This is like 2000, early 2002. They started doing the tours and people had, like you say, they'd started knocking on the door and going, can we have a look around? And Vic, who owns the red carpet tours, went and approached the Alexander family and said, look, I've got I've got these tours that are coming through every month and we'd love to come and see it. And they were actually going to be bowling down most of the hobbit holes.

[01:02:11] And also they were looking at taking down the tree as well, the party tree, because it was quite a big old tree and was ready to be, you know, particularly ideal for that landscape. Right. And they were about to be bowled down. And then there was this big rainstorm and then they the bulldozers couldn't get in. And then after that rainstorm was when but before the bulldozers came back was when Vic approached them and said, can we bring tours? And so they just decided not to bowl them down. Oh, that's such good timing. Yeah.

[01:02:41] And then so Vic started bringing the tours through and then they started to make it a bit more of a, you know, pay as you go kind of location. And then it just got bigger and bigger. And then, yeah, once they had filmed the so you could still go when it was not like fully dressed. It was just like you could see the landscape and you could still see the hobbit holes. But then once they had redressed it for for the Hobbit movies and then made it more permanent. Yeah. It's just an incredible, incredible location and like multi, multi million dollar business for them as well.

[01:03:09] They've done really well with their they've got a very lucrative dairy farm there. But now they've also got this incredible business with bringing tourists through and yeah, millions and millions of people per year go through there. And it's so special. It's so amazing. I'm really glad you got to see it. It's really cool. And for the end of your trip, it's like coming home to the to the Shire. It was a really it was a really cool experience. And then at the that tour was a two part tour. The other thing we did was that we visited the Waitomo Caves, which are these underground

[01:03:37] caves that are very highly populated by this special kind of worm that glows in the dark. And you have to be dead silent because apparently any noise or flash of light will cause the worms to go dark. So they put you in these like flat bottom boats on the still water in this cave in the pitch blackness. You can only see like that. There's just enough light for you to like just see the edge of the boat so you don't fall in the water like so dark.

[01:04:06] And you float around on the water in this dark, dark, dark cave. And up above you is just this carpet of glowing little tiny lights that that are worms. And it was it was really it did. It felt otherworldly. It was just a very cool experience. I love being in the pitch, pitch black. You know, I live in a city and sometimes I get really tired of light pollution. And whenever I have a chance to go somewhere where there's not light pollution and I can

[01:04:34] like go outside and see like really see how many stars are in the sky and like or to be somewhere where there's no light at all is kind of novel. And I enjoy it. Yeah, it's gorgeous there. There's quite a few places you can see glow worms around New Zealand. Just there's real touristy ones like that one. And there's another one in Te Ano. You can take a lake across a boat across the lake and then go into the caves there and do this similar trip. But this place is even in Dunedin.

[01:05:01] Like there's a wee walkway that you just go up this little path for about, you know, 10 minutes off the road. And there's a little gully and there's glow worms just hanging around there in the forest. Also on the West Coast as well. Now, Hokitika, there's some really cool glow worm spots there. So that's pretty cute. I loved it. I really feel like I need to go back, though. There's so much I didn't see. There's a bunch of other things on the North Island that sound kind of interesting.

[01:05:24] And I would love to see Christchurch on the South Island and spend more time just like traipsing around, just more time. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, to see New Zealand, the absolute highlights, you need three weeks. And then if you really want to explore, you need six weeks, to be honest. Like people kind of think, oh, it's just this island at the bottom of the Pacific. But it's actually a lot bigger than you think. And the distances are quite far because our roads are not multi-lane highways.

[01:05:53] You know, it will take you longer to get places than you expect. And each of the cities is really cool to explore. And there's so much else to explore. But yeah, it's definitely worth a trip if any of you are listening and thinking about coming over. There's so much to see. It's really cool. And I'm so glad you got to come. I love it. What a dream. I absolutely loved it. It was so wonderful. I mean, I loved Australia, too. I had a really good time there. I stayed with a different friend in Australia.

[01:06:19] And I saw one of our other Podcastica hosts, Jonathan, while I was there. We spent a day together and had a great time seeing some of the sites in Sydney. So I recommend both countries. And I know people tend to lump them together. People in the U.S. are, you know, they say like Australia, New Zealand, like it's one place. And I was very entertained by the fact that there's all this rivalry between the two. And definitely stop lumping us together.

[01:06:46] Like, you know, the way that like you are with a sibling where you're like, we are not the same. I'm not the same as my sister. Like it was that kind of sibling. And then also discover that there's a rivalry North Island versus South Island in New Zealand. I thought that was really charming. Oh, yeah. Well, we're in the mainland and the others are just up there in the little old North Island. We have like a quarter of the population, but twice the land and all the scenery. So yeah, I mean, my experience of the North Island was really limited, right?

[01:07:15] It was it was Auckland and Hobbiton. So I don't have a lot of opinion about it. But the South Island was better. Everywhere you go, there's things to see. And the great thing about New Zealand is that, yeah, I talked about the longer driving distances. But, you know, you can drive for half an hour and it's totally different landscape. You drive for another hour, it's completely different landscape again, because it's a lot crammed into a small area. So it seems like a lot of people do camper van trips. That seems to be an incredibly popular way to see the country, like flying from city to

[01:07:44] city seems a little excessive. Yeah. And with a camper van, you're not spending as much money on a hotel. There is now a direct flight. I saw signs all over the airport in Auckland. They're very excited about this. There's now a direct flight from New York City to Auckland, which would have saved me like 10 hours of travel time on my way home if I had booked that. Yeah, I think it's because the way that you lose all that travel time is the stopping and the checking in and the waiting and the layovers.

[01:08:14] I think it's a 16 hour flight from Auckland to, is it 16 or 19? I think somebody told me 19. I think it's 19. Yeah, 19 makes sense because I think it's 12 and a half hours to LA and then we've got the rest. You can also fly directly from Los Angeles or San Francisco to Christchurch as well if you come straight to the South Island. So that's another option too. Yeah, that's good to know for when I come back because I'm definitely going back.

[01:08:40] I also feel like I saw like just the tiniest scraping of Australia. Like I have so much more I need to go back and see. Yeah, that is a really big place. Yeah, it really is. And I met a lot of cool people and they were all like, but you're not going to come to my neck of the woods. Like everybody got all like, you have to come visit me here now and you have to go visit me there and you have to go to this place and that place. But I can't do it all in one trip. No, you can't. And if you try, I've been on those kind of trips where somebody was like, we're going

[01:09:09] to see eight sites today and then we're going to be in a different country tomorrow. Like that's a very popular European model and they're nightmares. And maybe when I was 19, I could handle that pace, but I am in my 50s. No, thank you. Yeah. But even when you're young, like I did a trip when I was 24 and it was a five month trip. I did a couple of months in the States, a couple of months in Europe. And when you're traveling that long, you actually need days off from traveling.

[01:09:35] So every week or two, I would make sure that I was somewhere for two nights and I would just do nothing. And if it was at someone's house, then even better, I could just hang out at their house, do nothing. Or if you're staying in a hostel or something, just don't do any sightseeing. Just stay in bed, sit in the lounge, read your book, you know, like you actually need breaks. It's too, it's, you get kind of overwhelmed. Like it's not even just the physical energy of getting around everywhere. It's just that your brain is overwhelmed by all of the new, new things. And it's a lot. I get this thing.

[01:10:03] I call it museum fatigue, but it's very similar to tourism fatigue where I've had enough stimulus in my brain and I can't take any more new stuff. And it happens to me often when I go to the Met in New York City, which is one of the biggest museums I've ever been to. It's a huge art museum. And it's also a really labyrinthine building. And what always happens to me is I go there, I see the exhibit I went for.

[01:10:28] I see one or two other things and then I'm ready to leave and I cannot find an exit, but I'm overstimulated and done looking at new stuff. So I start walking around with my hands over my, like above my eyes, like a visor, trying to find an exit without like looking at more art because I'm like, I can't, I can't see anything else. I just need to get outside. Like, and you do get that way when you're traveling. Like there are days when you're like, I can't see any more stuff.

[01:10:57] I'm just, I just need to like have a meal and maybe watch some Pedro Pascal. And yeah. Yeah. Last of Us was on the whole time I was there in Australia, New Zealand, and I was watching it on my like little tiny iPad screen with like, you know, my, my cell phone data plan using my phone as a hotspot. Like, and then when I got to your house and we watched an episode on your normal TV, I was like, Oh, I missed so many things. That was so funny.

[01:11:26] So the, so the finale, um, was it the, it was the finale of The Last of Us when you were here. Right. And you watched it on the Monday. So we left for Tiana on the Monday and it was out that night and you watched it. Oh no, it was episode two. It was the very momentous episode two. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Not the finale. Episode two, which we all know about. Um, and Bryce and I didn't watch it for four days and I managed to not get spoiled by the internet or by you. And I'm so, I'm so grateful to you. Yeah.

[01:11:55] I was sitting next to you in the car for four days, not telling you about this huge plot. And you know, Pedro comes up. You're like, you can't not talk about Pedro for four days. So we talked to The Last of Us too and how much we like the show and the different, and the characters. And I was like, not going to give anything away. La la la. I was very proud of myself for not spoiling it. It's very cool. Awesome. Oh, thank you so much for that trip down memory lane.

[01:12:23] It was so amazing to have you here and really cool to reminisce about the, about your trip. And officially, let me thank you again here for on the record for all time for hosting and being such a wonderful tour guide and making me feel comfortable with your family. It was, it was a really lovely time. Like I had fun grocery shopping with you and I had fun, like going to that fun run with you and like, I just had a good time. Yeah. That was really cool. Thank you. And of course you're welcome.

[01:12:52] And please come back anytime. It was so cool. It was so special. People have asked me, like other, other podcast people are like, oh, what's Anwen like in real life? And I'm like, you know, she's exactly like you think she is. And they were like, what? And I was like, she is the same person in person that she is when you talk to her on Zoom or whatever. And they were like, oh, and I was like, yeah, cool. Right. How, how are you, how would you be different? Oh, haven't you ever met somebody in real life?

[01:13:22] And they're like, just, they don't seem like the same person you thought they would be. I guess so. I don't know. I haven't met enough Zedheads to know. Most of the Zedheads that I've met have been who I thought they were going to be too. But like, I don't know. It was a big, it was kind of a weird thing. People were like, oh, how long have you known Anwen? I'm like, well, we've never actually met, you know, like you're going to go stay with somebody in New Zealand that you don't actually know. And I'm like, well, we know each other. And they were like, yeah, but, and I'm like, yeah, I know it's a little bit of a weird risk, but it turned out to be great.

[01:13:53] Yeah, the same thing happened here. I was like, oh yeah, my friend Penny's coming from Boston and we're going to go traveling around and stuff. And they're like, oh, when did you guys meet? And I was like, yeah, no, we've never met in real life. It was awesome. It was really cool. Cool. All right. So we're going to take a short break. And when we come back, we're going to start talking about the War of the Rohirrim and cover a little bit of news.

[01:14:27] Okay.

[01:14:54] And we're back and we're going to have a little chat about War of the Rohirrim. We were going to do a full episode on this, but I mean, I haven't done a huge amount of prep. I watched it once and quite enjoyed it. So I thought we'd just have a wee chat about it. We got a little bit of feedback about it as well. So the Lord of the Rings, the War of the Rohirrim is a 2024 anime fantasy film and it's directed by Kenji Kamiyama. The screenplay was by Geoffrey Addis and Will Matthews, Phoebe Gittins and Artie Papa Giorgio.

[01:15:24] And it's based on characters created by J.R.R. Tolkien. So the story is set about 200 years before Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit trilogies. It tells the story of legendary Rohan King Helm Hammerhand. When the neighboring Dunlendings propose a marriage to his daughter Hera, Helm unintentionally kills their leader in a fistfight and starts a war. So the film stars Brian Cox as Helm and Gaia Wise as Hera alongside Luke Pasquale, Lawrence

[01:15:53] Ubong-Williams, Lorraine Ashbourne and Miranda Otto. And Miranda Otto was sort of speculated and turned out to be true that she does the voiceover as the kind of link between the Peter Jackson films and this film to give us that kind of grounding. So she's kind of telling her story of her ancestor, I guess. What were your thoughts overall, Pinin? I thought it was a perfectly entertaining, well-produced animated film.

[01:16:23] It didn't blow me away the way I had hoped it would, but it did solidify for me the belief that there is a lot more room to tell stories in this universe. And that I'm hoping that there's a lot of room from the people who are sort of in charge of the universe to tell stories in lots of different styles as well.

[01:16:50] Like the fact that this had this sort of Japanese animation style was an interesting twist. Like when they first announced that they were doing an animated Lord of the Rings movie, I expected it to have more of a Disney feel. And the fact that it was more of a Japanese feel, I really enjoyed. Yeah, it was a really interesting choice. Yes.

[01:17:13] And for those who have been living under a rock, anime is a style of animation that originated in Japan. And it sort of features like really colorful graphics, quite high energy characters. They have a lot of action. And you quite often see that it's quite often a style that's used to show either futuristic or fantasy kind of stories. And the characters often have these large kind of emotive eyes and mouths.

[01:17:41] And there's various different anime styles that are within that as well. And I thought as well that it was a really interesting choice. Again, when they said animation before they kind of said that it was going to be anime, I wondered how it would look. Because I think animation now has become so realistic and so deep and so incredibly textured and detailed that, you know, you see these new animated films that come out with like

[01:18:08] they still sort of, I guess, cartoon style and that they're not photorealistic, although, you know, the technology has progressed to the fact where it can be. But I think a lot of them still choose to have this kind of really graphic, cartoony type style, but just with so much detail and texture. You know, you think about what they can do now with water and fire that they couldn't do before kind of an animation. But anime itself, and this particularly this version for the War of Rohirrim, is very stark.

[01:18:38] It's quite 2D almost. It's kind of like the old cell style animation where you have, yes, you have some shading, but a lot of it is still just really stark kind of graphic blocks of color. And I thought it was beautiful. I mean, I'm not, I always think to myself, oh, I'm not really that into animated films. But when I watch them, I really love them. So I don't know what's a mental block that I have to get past.

[01:19:01] There are things that creative people can do in the animated world that no matter how good our CGI technology is just don't have the same fantasy and impact as you can have in live action. And I like the way that the animation styles differ from reality. And it allows it to be sort of more fantastical. I've always been into animation since I was a little kid.

[01:19:30] I loved just the escapism of it, of like, it's so not the world I live in. It's so completely different. Live action has its own charm. And, you know, I love being able to see live action versions of my favorite stories. But yeah, animation is, it has a special place in my heart. Yeah, it was, I actually really enjoyed it. So once, it took me a few minutes to kind of get into, for my brain to kind of click into the style, the visual style of it.

[01:20:00] Once it did, I really enjoyed it. I thought it was quite a simple story, but quite effective, quite well told. And, you know, it was quite an adventure. I liked the fact that there was a strong female character in the lead. I thought that was really cool because as we know, Lord of the Rings, in the books and in the histories, there are a lot more strong female characters. But in the trilogy, there's really not much going on there, apart from Eowyn.

[01:20:24] So it was nice to see her ancestor and to see the strength of those kind of shield maidens and how that, you know, how she was living her heritage when we see her in the trilogy, which was really cool. It was a kind of standard fairy tale story in some ways in that it was like a princess princess and the king was approached to marry the princess to a lord from, you know, another kingdom.

[01:20:51] And that was all a little tropey, but then it diverged from there. And they were childhood friends and then they became enemies. And yeah, there's a few things going on. I liked that she had brothers that she clearly had a good relationship with. A lot of times sort of Disney princesses are only children or they're sort of isolated. And it seems like they didn't have any life at all before the story started.

[01:21:18] But she had a fully lived in feel about her life beforehand. And, you know, she's sort of a tomboy princess who wanted to be hunting and feeding eagles and having adventures and not be like a pretty princess in a pretty dress. One of my favorite sequences was when they, and it's sort of a link to the Rings of Power as well, is when they find the creature, one of the nameless things. And she has to have this big fight with it. I thought that was really cool.

[01:21:48] It was really well done. And I really enjoyed, there were just a couple of little scenes with orcs. And I was just glad to see them because it was such a connection to the rest of the Lord of the Rings universe. And I was like, orcs, there's orcs in this. This is really in Middle Earth. And then also Saruman shows up at the end. So it connects it directly to the stories in Lord of the Rings, which is great. That's awesome. And I definitely agree with what you're saying about keeping, you know, widening the universe.

[01:22:16] And I think that the Rings of Power started there. And this is the next step. And then, of course, we're going to have the Hunt for Gollum movies. And there's a bunch of things that they can do. It's such a rich and varied world that I think whatever material we can get is great. You know, you're always going to have, we've had this conversation so many times, but you're always going to have those purists who say, it has to be this and it has to be that. But, you know, let's just mine this incredible world and have these creative people bring us the stories that we can enjoy because it is pretty awesome. Yeah.

[01:22:43] One of the things I love about the MCU and the way that it has unfolded over the last 20 years is that they've brought in directors and creators with very different sensibilities. And they've had all of the sort of non-main Avengers movies and TV shows have had all these very different styles from each other. And I think it keeps the MCU fresh because the stories have, you know, certain similar

[01:23:13] elements to them. Superheroes can be a little silly, but when you're bringing in a Chloe Zhao or you're bringing in, now I'm blanking on the name of the creators of the brilliant Agatha all along. But when you're bringing in these people with these very different sensibilities and points of view, you get such a wide variety of outcome. And I think that, you know, Star Wars is a universe that has almost infinite possibilities.

[01:23:41] And I think Middle Earth, just there's so many ways that you could go, so many stories that could be told. Exactly. Yeah. We'll always look forward to more. And we have to have some things to keep us going in between the two year drought between the Rings of Power seasons, don't we? Yeah, we do. We really do. Yeah. So we got some feedback about the War of the Rohirrim. Would you like to start us off? A few people let us know they haven't watched it yet, but are keen.

[01:24:09] Mark McBurney, Sarah Werner, and Karen Schmelt-Cohn. We hear you. Let us know what you think when you have seen it. We got a message from Alma Contreras. I finally watched War of the Rohirrim. What a great story. Though I do admit I wish it was not animated. Not a huge fan of anime or animated movies, so it did take me a minute to get into it. But once I did, I did love it. I kept thinking of King Aladin and Eowyn. I'm not sure I spelt their names right. I wonder if you mean Thayden and Eowyn.

[01:24:38] Hope you all know who I meant. Yeah. I look forward to listening to the cast. Yeah, I'm with you, Alma. Same sort of thing. Not so into the anime, but enjoyed it once I got into it. So I think we're on the same page there. And yeah, I think there were so many echoes of Thayden and Eowyn in their relationship, which was kind of nice too, to see that through thread. Yeah, I agree. Nathan Eshelman says, I love anime and was excited to experience Lord of the Rings in a new medium. The sky is the limit with animation because you don't have to worry about practical sets

[01:25:08] and building props. You can just draw whatever you imagine. Miranda Otto's narration really made it feel like home. It was a nice surprise to hear Billy and Dom cameo as orcs as well. Oh, I forgot about that. Yeah. That's why you love them so much. That's why I like York so much. That's cool. It was, oh, he also says, it was awesome to see Penny's photos throughout her journey and to vicariously see the sights that way. One day, I hope I get to meet Anwen and see New Zealand for myself. Nathan, I hope so too. Oh, yes, please Nathan.

[01:25:38] Come on over. It's a long way, but it's worth it. It is worth it. But I've learned my lesson. It's funny. I thought putting aside four weeks for a trip to the other side of the world was like a lot of time. But if I had to do it again, I'd find a way to do three months. Yeah, absolutely. All right. Well, thanks everyone for your feedback. Really appreciate that. I know it was kind of short notice, but I'm really glad that you sent us your thoughts and everyone else who hasn't seen it, please still let us know what you think.

[01:26:08] We're really keen to know what you think of that and any of the other content that's coming up as well. And in terms of Rings of Power, we've got a little bit of news. There's been a bit of news trickling in over the last few months. And if you haven't caught up with the news back in February, because we haven't been on the air since then, they have confirmed season three of the Rings of Power. So the Lord of the Rings of Power will be back for a third season. Prime Video has announced.

[01:26:36] Pre-production has started on the show and filming will begin in the spring. A premiere date for season three has yet to be announced. But let's be honest, I reckon it's probably going to be August next year. Like that seems like to be the pattern. Yeah. As a timing kind of thing. Apparently, it's going to be jumping forward several years from the events of the past season, with season three taking place at the height of the War of the Alps and Sauron, as the Dark Lord seeks to craft the One Ring that will give him the edge he needs to win the

[01:27:03] war and conquer all of Middle-earth at last. So that's going to be interesting, eh? What do you think about a time jump and how far do you think they're going to go ahead? Yeah, I have mixed feelings whenever there's a time jump because what inevitably happens is there's some state of affairs in the new timeline. And I'm like, but wait, how did we get here? And I just want to see more of the story. I always want more. So, you know, that's a little sad.

[01:27:32] But then again, I trust them. I have liked the decisions that they've made in the past for the most part. And if they're jumping to the height of the war, it means sort of maximum drama. Yeah. And I think they've got a lot to get through. We've talked about this before where, you know, season three is going to be the war. Season four, potentially more of a story of Numenor. And then season five leading up to the final alliance of elves and men.

[01:27:59] So there is a lot of ground to cover, especially if you're only getting kind of eight episodes per season. It's going to be interesting to see how much of a time jump because, again, they play around so much with the timeline that the whole siege of Eregion lasted like 80 years in the book. And it lasted like a day, two days in the series. So they can play around with whatever they like. And again, I trust them as well, like you do. They're going to make a story that works.

[01:28:28] I guess the interesting thing is going to be how much of a time jump and what that means for any of the human characters that we see. So when they say time jump, I'm thinking maybe five years, 10 years. It's not going to be huge because you've still got the characters and actors that are playing. I know Numenorians last longer, but you've got Elendil and Isildur who will age up, but can't age up too much because they've got a huge amount of story left to tell.

[01:28:56] But then other characters like Theo, what are they going to do there? You know, the actor is going to be two years older during the filming. And we already noticed a difference in him from the first two seasons. So are they going to kind of age him up again? And what role is he going to have? So yeah, it'll be really cool to see what they do. But again, I like the idea of jumping straight into really intense more battles and, you know, the making of the one ring. We all want to see that.

[01:29:23] Yeah, that's the thing that everyone's like holding their breath for. Yeah, it's going to be great. There was also a story from Deadline.com, Rings of Power adds Jamie Campbell Bauer to the season three cast. And just heads up, there's a little bit of speculation in here that some people might think are spoilers. But I guess just fast forward like a minute if you don't want to hear that.

[01:29:51] This is a match made in genre heaven. Jamie Campbell Bauer, star of Netflix's blockbuster supernatural drama Stranger Things, is joining one of the biggest fantasy franchises of all time. Bauer has been tapped as a series regular for the upcoming third season of Prime Videos, The Lord of the Rings, The Rings of Power. Additionally, Ray Donovan alum Eddie Marsan is set to recur on the new season, which is currently in pre-production. As usual, details about the role are being kept under wraps.

[01:30:20] But I hear Bauer plays Rings of Power's biggest new cast edition, a character described as a handsome highborn knight with a codename of Arlen in casting information that has been circulated around. He could be a new love interest for Galadriel, Morfid Clark, who spent the second season facing the reality of her season one love interest, Hal Brand's Charlie Vickers' true identity as arch-villain Sauron. I don't know if I would qualify him as her season one love interest.

[01:30:48] There was definitely some chemistry there, but it was not a full-on love interest. No, it was a power couple thing, not a romantic couple thing in my mind. And yeah, they never went there until the very end when he was like, be my queen. Everything else was just like sort of, you can read into it if you want to. Oh, and people did. Yeah, everyone did. Partially just because Charlie Vickers is incredibly handsome, and so everyone was like, she must be in love with him. Mm-hmm. And let me see, where were we?

[01:31:18] Oh yeah, the rest of the article. Whatever the role may be exactly, it is expected to be a major departure from the monstrous Vecna that Bauer plays on Stranger Things, something he recently alluded to at a fan convention while bringing up a conversation with his therapist about his post-Stranger Things plans. I turned around to him and I was like, be honest with you, man. I just don't think I'll be doing another bad guy for a minute, Bauer was quoted as saying. Like, it Fs me up. I'm dead serious.

[01:31:45] Not much is known about Marsan's character either, codenamed Drom, besides the fact that he has a brother. Since the role reportedly required Scottish accent, the English actor could presumably be playing a dwarf. Yeah, so I mean, I've got my thoughts about it. Again, like, light spoilers, but we've already heard tell of two of these characters in the season two already.

[01:32:09] So I think it's pretty clear that Bauer is going to be playing Caliborn. I hope so. Eladriel's husband. She's mentioned him. We have to see him at some point, surely. The only other option, I've seen online a lot of people saying that maybe he's going to be like Glorfindel or something like that, like another high elf. It's possible. That could be. That could be if they bring Glorfindel, and I hope they do, because there's, you know,

[01:32:35] he's a really incredible, powerful elf and really pivotal to a lot of the story, but hasn't been explored so far in what we've seen on screen. But I love Jamie Bauer. I think he's incredibly talented. His portrayal of Vecna has been fantastic on Stranger Things. He's he. Oh, I really want to do a rewatch of that. I what did somebody say about him? He always understands the assignment. Jamie Bauer.

[01:33:01] Like he's always so fully and completely committed to his performance and to the character that he's playing. Yeah. There's never a moment where you don't believe that he is. He is that character. My favorite Jamie Jamie Bauer role, though, is in Twilight. He plays one of the evil vampires and he's like he's all prissy and like he's always got a cape on and he's just so all three of those.

[01:33:31] It's Michael Sheen, Christopher Heyerdahl and Jamie Campbell Bauer, who play the three lultuary vampires. All three of them just absolutely nail those performances. They're the best thing about those movies. They're so good. Yeah. I am so excited for him to join this cast. I think he's going to be great. It's going to be great. And, you know, let's face it. He looks like an elf. He's perfect. It's perfect casting. And, you know, along with those high cheekbones that he has and his huge expressive eyes. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:34:00] He's a beautiful man. It's going to be amazing. I don't know Eddie Marsan as much. I definitely recognize the picture of him, but I haven't seen most of the things that he's been in. Yeah. Look, he is one of those that guy actors. You know, when you see a movie and you go, hey, I know that guy, but you don't know where from. And you look him up on IMDb. He's got like 138 credits. He is a solid working actor. He's always been around and he's probably been in millions of things that you've seen.

[01:34:26] The listing that I saw was apparently he's done quite a lot with Mike Lee. So Vera Drake, Happy Go Lucky and A Running Jump or Mike Lee movies. Often he plays these characters who are quite complex and relatable. He's done quite a few big studio films as well. So you might have seen him in Mission Impossible 3, B for Vendetta, Hancock. He was in the Sherlock Holmes franchise. He's quite a long running character called Terry in the Showtime series Ray Donovan.

[01:34:56] And the thing that I saw him most recently in was Heartstopper. He plays Charlie's therapist in Heartstopper. He's great. And I think he's going to be really cool in this. Again, he has to have a Scottish accent. He's known to have a brother. Surely he's going to be Duren's brother. We've had an introduction to him verbally in the last season. And they talked about how Duren is the edge of the throne, but also his brother could have a claim. So I think we're going to see him. He'll be great. Is that you can just imagine him with the beard and the hair and the outfit.

[01:35:26] It's going to be really cool. And I am excited to explore a sibling dynamic between Duren and his brother because I have loved so much exploring the father-son relationship and his relationship with his wife. And just to add a whole other dimension and watch him deal with a complicated sibling relationship. I'm excited about it. I love the dwarves. I love spending time with dwarves. Anything that means more dwarf story, I am so on board for that. It's going to be great.

[01:35:55] And, you know, two years is a long time, but we're almost halfway there. If you think about it, it's June already. And, you know, it's August next year. You know, it's going to come around quick. So I am excited to see what we have to see there. And who knows? We don't know when we're going to be coming back in for another recording. We'll see what happens. But in the meantime, if you do want to join in the conversation, there's so much going on over at podcastica.com.

[01:36:22] Also on the Facebook page, please join us. Yeah. And while you're over there, look at some of our other podcasts. We cover so many shows and sometimes movies. Sometimes it's hard to look around, but there is a search feature on podcastica.com and you could put in any TV show or movie that you're interested in and it'll let you know if any of the different podcasts have covered it. You don't have to go like podcast by podcast to find things. There's also a really nice, if you just go to the main podcast tab, there is actually,

[01:36:53] Jason's made such an incredible job of the website, but also the artwork for each of the podcasts is really unique. So really eye-catching and you can kind of scroll through those and it has the name of each of the podcast on there. And then when you click on that, it goes into the detail. So if you're a visual person and you like kind of going through and seeing something that catches your eye or you recognize the name of a show, that's another nice way to have a look at what's on there, but so many shows that we cover. I really enjoyed Yellow Jackets and Last of Us coverage.

[01:37:22] I loved the White Lotus coverage that's just finished up as well. And or Jonathan and James did an incredible job with that too. And what have you got coming up, Penny? So right now we're smack in the middle of season two of Poker Face, which is a mystery of the week show on the Peacock Network in the US. I don't know where you watch it outside the US, starring Natasha Lyonne. And every episode has a completely different cast of amazing guest stars.

[01:37:52] She gets names that you 100% will recognize and be excited about. The opening episode of season two starred, guest starred Cynthia Erivo, who you may know as Elphaba in the absolutely fantastic Wicked movie. And she plays not one, not two, not three, but five sisters, identical quintuplets. And it's a laugh riot. It's a really funny episode.

[01:38:21] The show is known for its hilarious dialogue and for Natasha Lyonne's sort of unique, raspy voiced delivery style that if you have seen, you know, Orange is the New Black or going back a ways to something like Slums of Beverly Hills or But I'm a Cheerleader, then you know how cool she is. Or Russian Doll, which she also produced, which is great. Awesome.

[01:38:48] Oh, I will definitely be catching up on that when I get the chance and can't wait to listen to your coverage of it. It's going to be great. I didn't mention that the show is called Poker Face, but the podcast is called Murder Magnets because the main character, Charlie Kale, is a murder magnet. Every time she goes to a new town, somebody dies and she has to soften the street. Fantastic. Sounds great. Well, it has been amazing talking to you again, Penny. As I say, keep your eyes out. We never know when we're going to be popping back up again.

[01:39:18] But in the meantime, that's our show. Thanks for listening, everyone. When the songs of this day are sung. When the names of its heroes are read. We will stand. We will stand.