Mount Sunday (Edoras)

Mount Sunday was another set location used in Lord of the Rings.  We seem to be going to quite a few of those.  The film crew’s location scouts did search for all the most dramatic & beautiful locations in the Country though, so it absolutely made sense for us to seek them out too!

Mount Sunday is the little ‘hill’ on the floodplains in the middle right of the first pic.  The hill looks tiny in the pic, but its summit is actually about 300 feet above the valley floor. The hill sits just before the confluence of two rivers, the Clyde and the Havelock. The hill’s location in the fertile valley near the two rivers inspired two present day sheep stations to collectively call themselves Mesopotamia Station. The inspiration for the name Mount Sunday came about due to the habit of shepherds from the two sheep stations to meet up by the hill on Sunday afternoons.

Here’s a gallery of photos highlighting our visit to Mount Sunday!

The Rangitata Valley stretches into the distance, where the Rangitata River splits into the Havelock and Clyde Rivers. Mount Sunday is the small bump of on the right side of this photo.

Mount Sunday with the Southern Alps providing a fairly spectacular backdrop

Here’s a screenshot of Edoras from the Lord of the Rings.  It took the film crew eleven months to build the set, including the ‘Golden Hall of the Kings’ on the summit of Mount Sunday.

We had a short hike into Mount Sunday from the parking lot to the east

Angela on the summit of Mount Sunday

The surroundings made for a fairly spectacular lunch!

We met a fellow Lord of the Rings fan who insisted that we needed to take a picture through the ‘One Ring’, which she conveniently carried around in her pocket.

A tour group later showed up with replica swords from the movies, and proceeded to engage in fake battles on the summit.  Apparently, it’s a thing …

Edoras, Mount Sunday

Here’s a few more pics as we head back down to the Thunder Canary …