How to hike from Valbona to Theth
May 8, 2024
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Albania | Our guide to hiking from Valbona to Theth; two beautiful traditional villages lying deep in the Albanian Alps
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The success of The Lord of the Rings film series and Amazon’s huge Rings of Power spin-off has made New Zealand a premier tourist destination for fans of J.R.R Tolkien’s fantasy epic.
Yet it wasn’t the Waikato region that initially inspired Hobbiton and the Shire, but what was once the rural location of Sarehole in the United Kingdom.
Now a suburb of modern-day Birmingham, I had the pleasure of immersing myself in the original location that inspired John Ronald Reuel Tolkien’s vivid imagination.
Here’s a guide to Sarehole Mill’s Tolkien Tour.
Sarehole Mill is located on the Cole Bank Road in Hall Green, a suburb in South Birmingham. It also borders Moseley, an area rich in character with historical locations including a Grade II-listed Edwardian swimming pool and the 160-year old Prince of Wales pub. Oh, it is also the home of Britpop band Ocean Colour Scene!
The address for Sarehole Mill Museum is:
Sarehole Mill
Cole Bank Road
Birmingham
B13 0BD
The current Sarehole Mill building was built in 1771, though a mill is said to have existed on-site since 1542. The chimney was constructed in 1855 when the owner installed a steam engine to cater for an increased demand for power.
If you’re looking for a Lord of the Rings-inspired experience, then you’ll want to join the “Origins of Middle Earth tour: J.R.R Tolkien and Sarehole Guided Walk”. These take place every Sunday at 10:00am.
There are also general guided tours available at Sarehole Mill throughout the week and on weekends.
The tour is priced at £10 per person.
Unfortunately not, as the tour goes across a field and into Moseley Bog where there are steps and narrow wooden walkways.
The tour begins at Sarehole Mill and takes you to Moseley Bog, where there are steps and a boardwalk throughout the nature reserve, so good walking shoes are recommended.
Also, with it being outside in the UK, I highly recommend warm clothing in Autumn/Winter and a waterproof coat any time of the year!
Sarehole Mill’s cafe opens from 12:00pm -15:00 pm, serving pizza and delicacies from its bakery from Wednesday to Sunday.
There is also a small gift shop open from 11:00am to 16:00pm on the same days.
By Road
Located just five miles from Birmingham City Centre, Sarehole Mill is located on Cole Bank Road in Hall Green. It is easy to get to and there is free car parking at the venue. The best postcode to use for navigation is B13 0BD.
By Bus
There are a number of buses you can take in and around Birmingham to get to Sarehole Mill:
Make sure to get off at the Sarehole Mill, Cole Bank Road bus stop.
By Rail
To access Sarehole Mill by rail, the closest train station is Hall Green station. There are direct trains from Birmingham Moor Street, which is the other main train station in Birmingham city centre.
By Bicycle
Planning to cycle to Sarehole Mill? The mill’s car park has bike racks available.
We were taken on the tour by Ashley, our excellent guide who provided a very knowledgeable, detailed commentary with several amusing anecdotes.
Friendly, engaging and happy to answer any questions, he dispelled a few myths and provoked both thought and imagination on a number of occasions.
You don’t have to be a Tolkien fanatic to enjoy this tour. Ashley explained that Sarehole Mill often gets visitors who have never read the books or watched the films.
He struck a great balance between interesting, obscure facts for the hardcore fans and general, introductory points for those new to the author’s works.
Throughout the tour, we learned how Sarehole Mill, the wider area and its residents served as a source of inspiration for The Shire, the hobbits and other magical places in Middle-Earth.
Birds sing and water runs as the mill wheel slowly churns. Young children laugh and fool around while a butterfly floats past on the breeze. A tranquil, rural vision you wouldn’t associate with Birmingham – the UK’s second city – known for its industrial heritage and home to the Peaky Blinders, right?
Yet Sarehole and its 250-year old mill was once part of rural Worcestershire. It was a countryside-haven ideal for a young J.R.R Tolkien to get up to mischief with his younger brother, Hilary.
It takes a little imagination to picture this at the start of the tour as the sound of car engines roar down the nearby Cole Bank Road.
However, once you look across the millpond at Sarehole Mill, it quickly transforms into a sanctuary of nature and peace. An Egret and Grey Heron perched high in the trees, while Moor Hens swam lazily across the millpond.
For the Tolkien siblings, Sarehole Mill was a favourite place to play. Vaulting the fence from their home across the road, the boys would swim and play within the grounds of the mill.
This was much to the ire of the miller, George Andrew and his son, who would often chase them away. In fact, millers were often portrayed in Tolkien’s works as angry, unfriendly people thereafter!
One really cool, interesting point I enjoyed was when Ashley told the story behind Tolkien’s love for trees. One day, a willow next to the millpond was cut down and left to rot.
This traumatized the young boy. It later inspired him to write a memorable scene in the sacking of the Shire towards the end of the Lord of the Rings, when the Hobbits mourn the felling of Bilbo’s party tree.
When the Tolkien’s moved to Sarehole in 1896, the pleasant green fields of Worcestershire gave way to the industrial city of Birmingham on the horizon, bellowing black smoke as the forges of industry ran aglow day and night.
As industrialisation grew at an unprecedented rate, trees were hewn down and green fields lost, eventually swallowing Sarehole and the surrounding area into the suburbs of Birmingham.
Could this have been the inspiration for Mordor or Isengaard?
The tour then departed the mill and walked into a field in the nearby Shire Country Park that retains the same boundaries as when Tolkien was a boy. Used for sheep farming back then, it is now enjoyed as a recreational space by the people of Hall Green.
Here, Ashley stopped to tell us about various local characters and stories that could have influenced Tolkien’s writing, including the origins of Sam Gamgee’s surname!
We progressed on to Moseley Bog, understood by many to be Tolkien’s first childhood experience of an English forest. Described in The Worlds of J.R.R Tolkien by John Garth (pg.114-115) as “a wonderful dell with orchids, mushrooms and gigantic blackberries”, Moseley Bog is said to have inspired the Old Forest in the Lord of the Rings.
A young Tolkien and his brother would spend many a day in these woods, climbing trees and running through the thicket, letting their imaginations run wild.
Perhaps another reason he loved Moseley Bog was because it’s one of the few places we’ve allowed to return to nature. It had once been an artificial pool feeding the nearby mill that was drained and abandoned.
Nowadays, it is home to a superb array of plants, animals and insects – just how Tolkien would have liked it.
There’s little doubt that there is an old magic in the air. I imagined the elves walking through the woods in procession or the ents strolling through, tending to the trees.
Gnarled old tree roots made me feel like I was in Fangorn, while Moseley Bog itself was actually part of Tolkien’s inspiration for the Dead Marshes.
Ashley explained how Tolkien was a genius at taking inspiration from multiple places and piecing them together. In this case, he referred to his experience during World War I and the Battle of the Somme, which he survived.
During the Great War, many soldiers died by falling into flooded crater holes, drowning wearing heavy backpacks. It is said soldiers could see their comrades’ faces just below the water; reminiscent of the Dead Marshes that Frodo and Sam walked through on their way to Mordor.
We visited Moseley Bog as part of the Origins of Middle Earth tour in October, but were told by Ashley that it is home to a fantastic display of Bluebells every Spring.
In folklore, bluebells were said to be home to fairies and would ring when they summoned their kin to a gathering. Another inspiration for Tolkien’s magical world maybe?
The forest has a network of wooden pathways that you can use to walk around the 29 acre site. Although the guided tour ends here, you can either return to Sarehole Mill with Ashley or spend more time exploring Moseley Bog, taking in the ancient, enchanted atmosphere around you.
After the tour, we returned back to Sarehole Mill and enjoyed the pleasant surroundings of the mill, including the wonderful courtyard and the beautiful garden complete with iron versions of the two towers.
It has a great cafe that serves wonderful hot chocolate, as well as homemade pizza and other delicacies from its modern-day bakery.
The staff at Sarehole Mill were very friendly and knowledgeable about Tolkien, with each one clearly passionate about the history of the mill and the importance of maintaining it for the future.
Make sure to take some time to visit the gallery at the bottom of the courtyard, which is home to a small exhibition featuring details about J.R.R Tolkien’s time in the West Midlands and how it inspired his works.
It was interesting to read about his time at King Edwards Grammar School and how other parts of Birmingham and Worcestershire, including the Lickey Hills in Rednall and the Malvern Hills, inspired locations across Middle Earth.
I particularly enjoyed Sarehole Mill’s cool little gift shop that sells copies of Tolkien’s works and other author’s books about the great writer.
Whether you want to pick up a copy of The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings – or maybe one of his lesser known works such as The Silmarillion – there’s something for everyone.
I also picked up John Garth’s The Worlds of J.R.R Tolkien, which I’ve quoted in this blog; a superb insight into the places that inspired middle-earth.
One thing to note is that Sarehole Mill is a charity, so all money made goes back to preserving the site.
I feel this is very important, so I was even happier to buy my books there knowing it would support the maintenance of this historical venue rather than go to a major internet retailer.
It’s crazy to think that 120-years ago, Sarehole Mill was surrounded by rolling green fields and lush British countryside.
Perhaps John Ronald Reuel Tolkien could see the march of industrialisation was unstoppable and these pleasant green pastures would one day be lost forever.
Tolkien’s passion for the environment and the countryside does resonate with me.
With humanity seemingly intent on living in an increasingly digital state, I do wonder if we’ll ever wake up to the complex, intricate and irreplaceable world we already have around us.
I increasingly feel myself pushing back and wanting a more simple life away from that fake, unnatural existence.
It is a privilege to have visited Sarehole Mill. We are so fortunate to have had this 250-year old mill preserved for future generations.
Ultimately, it’s a source of inspiration for arguably the greatest literary works of all time. Tolkien himself once told a newspaper that The Shire “was inspired by a few cherished square miles of countryside at Sarehole” (The Worlds of J.R.R Tolkien by John Garth, pg.12-13).
Of course I’d do New Zealand. Who wouldn’t want to see those incredible landscapes?
That said, whether you’re a Lord of the Rings fan, a lover of literature or just enjoy a good adventure, then include a visit to Sarehole Mill as part of a Birmingham Lord of the Rings tour and experience the real deal.
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