LOTR Edoras

Having gotten directions and a map from Ashburton, we could start on the Journey to Edoras.

Here's what the pamphlet says:

Nestled deep on a Canterbury high country station was the set for Edoras, the fortress city of the Rohan people in the The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. The spectacular location on Mount Potts
Station, in the Rangitata river valley in the Ashburton district
(around 2.5 hours drive inland from Christchurch) seemed purpose built for the production; a sheer-sided hill in the middle of an expansive plain, bordered by impassable mountains of rock and ice.
The production crew took nine months to build the set atop the cliffs, during which time the locals peeked around to see as much as they could. The finished product looked otherworldly and strangely historic, a testament to the truly remarkable atmosphere of the area.

Director Peter ]ackson and his team, actually worked from inside the
buildings that were constructed for the Mount Potts set - the interior scenes from Edoras were filmed several months beforehand in
Wellington, so the large buildings in reality served as shelter and,
extravagant food tents for the approximately 1000 cast and crew!

"Never shall forget the utter loneliness of the prospect; only the little far away homestead giving sign of human handiwork, the vastness of mountain and plain, of river and sky; the marvellous atmospheric affects sometimes black mountains against a white sky, and then again, after cold weather, white mountains against black sky".

Thus wrote Samuel Butler in his classic novel Erewhon, a fine description of a harsh landscape that for eleven months became Edoras, the capital city of Rohan.

The rough country around us really made us imagine crossing the Riddermark. We followed the map along a long unpaved gravel road until finally Mt Sunday, Meduseld came into view. Not long ago this little hill hosted impressive Edoras. The Edoras set was real and took 11 months to complete. It was quite elaborate, as you can see in the movies.

Now nothing remains, but the hill still is and always will be remembered as the place of the mighty Rohirrim.