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BIRMINGHAM, England- Fancy a walk around Hobbiton, a trip to the Old Forest and perhaps a postcard of the Two Towers from The Lord of the Rings?
You won't have to travel to Middle Earth, as the city of Birmingham plans to promote the places which inspired best-selling writer J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy novels when he lived in the area as a boy between 1895 and 1911.
Few of these links are easily apparent, and the city, encouraged by the response to its annual Tolkien Weekend, is keen to draw visitors regularly with guided tours, exhibits and souvenir shops.
"We clearly needed to put these places on the map," said Mike Reed, a community librarian who helps organise the Tolkien Weekend every May with support from the official Tolkien Society and the Birmingham City Council.
Now in its seventh year, the Tolkien Weekend has grown from a small community event to a festival drawing 15,000 people. Visitors came from countries such as Norway, Japan and New Zealand, where the movies were filmed.
Visitors, often dress as trolls and elves, enact scenes from the books in public and the event sometimes draws members of Tolkien's family, some of whom still live in Birmingham.
"The success of the weekend came as a complete surprise to us," said Reed, who said he was still recovering from this year's event, which marked the 70th anniversary of the publication of Tolkien's The Hobbit.
Reed, who read Tolkien as a boy, lists several Birmingham inspirations: Tolkien lived with his mother and brother in Sarehole village, which was the model for Hobbiton, the home of Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit.
Sarehole Mill is the great mill, and the bad-tempered miller in The Lord of the Rings was probably based on the miller there, Reed said. Moseley Bog became the Old Forest in the Rings trilogy and the ring-bearing Frodo's companion Sam Gamgee, was probably based on Sampson Gamgee, a Birmingham surgeon.
Reed lives near the buildings that apparently inspired the Rings' Two Towers - a 96-foot structure known as Perrott's Folly and the nearby Edgbaston Waterworks.
"I have seen coaches of Japanese tourists come up to the Two Towers, take pictures and just leave. Maybe they didn't know about these other places," he said.
But putting some of these spots on the tourist trail may be tough: Birmingham has traditionally been regarded as an industrial hub, and some of Tolkien's old homes are private residences. Others, like Perrott's Folly, are heritage landmarks, which means annual visitor numbers are restricted in order to preserve the buildings.
"We have little or no control over some sites, so all we can do is integrate and market everything better," said Chris Rice, a spokesman for the city council,
"We are obviously proud of Tolkien's links to the city and are keen to exploit them in the nicest way possible, in a manner he would approve," Rice said.
- REUTERS
