LOTR: The Orc Mound

In New Zealand we found this little book on Lord of the Rings filming locations. Of course we had to find some use for it. As we visited the both islands on our trip, we drove past quite many of the locations described in the book, and also stopped to visit some of them.

In addition being 'just cool' to visit real places where they had filmed Lord of the Rings movies, the guidebook also provived really amazing New Zealand nature sights, some of which we certainly wouldn't have visited without the book. The other great thing was getting to witness some genuine movie magic; how some really simple locations had been used really creatively to create an illusion of Middle Earth.

One of the places we went was the so called Orc Mound from the second film Two Towers. 'Surprisingly' the place where the Rohan riders had piled and burned some dead orcs didn't look exactly the same, but the spot was easily recognizable. The place was merely but a small hill next to a thick forest wall (which didn't at all look like Fangorn inside) on private meadow, quite close to the sand road nearby.

There was couple other places used in the filming nearby too. More photo vs. screenshot comparisons to come...