{"id":4013,"date":"2026-05-15T17:02:25","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T16:02:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/?p=4013"},"modified":"2026-05-15T17:02:25","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T16:02:25","slug":"the-tolkien-connection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/the-tolkien-connection\/","title":{"rendered":"The Tolkien Connection"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We have just two more days in Lauterbrunnen before we have to leave and head towards home. As forecast, today was grey and overcast with low clouds and occasional showers &#8211; a good day to stay near to the campsite and do a few chores.<\/p>\n<p>One of those chores was to do some shopping. The only supermarket we&#8217;ve found in the small town is a Co-op, just across from the railway station. It isn&#8217;t very big, and only has a limited selection of stuff, but it will be enough to feed us for a couple of days. We&#8217;ll find a supermarket as we head back up North, into France, and stock up then.<\/p>\n<p>One thing we noticed about Lauterbrunnen today, was just how busy it is, with day visitors. We can only assume most of them arrive by train since there isn&#8217;t a lot on the way of car parks, and we&#8217;ve seen very few coaches. The town was simply buzzing with folks milling around, sitting in cafes and bars, gravitating towards the Staubbachfall waterfall, one of 27 such waterfalls in the valley, posing for selfies or making the climb to the back of the falls (which we haven&#8217;t done yet, but didn&#8217;t fancy it with all the people&#8230; maybe tomorrow&#8230;).<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/tolkien_01.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-4026\" src=\"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/tolkien_01.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1000\" height=\"610\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/tolkien_01.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/tolkien_01-300x183.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/tolkien_01-768x468.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ve been here almost a week and I&#8217;ve only just discovered a Tolkien connection. In 1911, at the age of 19, J.R.R. Tolkien visited the Swiss Alps with a group of hikers. In his own words, affected by the majestic area surrounded by its towering mountains and deep valleys, Tolkien said; \u201c<em>I left the view of Jungfrau with deep regret, and the Silberhorn sharp against dark blue<\/em>.\u201d Over fifty years later, when he wrote <em>The Hobbit<\/em> and <em>The Lord of The Rings<\/em>, in letters to his son, he admitted that the landscape featured in Bilbo&#8217;s journey to the Misty Mountains and beyond, was directly inspired by his own adventures in 1911. Lauterbrunnen in fact is mentioned by numerous historians as Tolkien\u2019s inspiration for Rivendell, and the falls within Tr\u00fcmmelbach may have inspired the Mines of Moria.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/tolkien_02.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-4027\" src=\"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/tolkien_02.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1000\" height=\"512\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/tolkien_02.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/tolkien_02-300x154.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/tolkien_02-768x393.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>It also explains why one of the shops in the town, as well as having a full-size cardboard cut-out of James Bond in the window, also had a life-size model of Aragorn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We have just two more days in Lauterbrunnen before we have to leave and head towards home. As forecast, today was grey and overcast with low clouds and occasional showers &#8211; a good day to stay near to the campsite and do a few chores. One of those chores was to do some shopping. The only supermarket we&#8217;ve found in&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4027,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[29,40],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4013"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4013"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4013\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4028,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4013\/revisions\/4028"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}