A Travel Moment That Changed Me - Mount Sunday, New Zealand

I can already hear the laughter from my friends and family as I write this because of course, it was only a matter of time before I penned something that wove together New Zealand and The Lord of the Rings. What can I say? Some passions are just stitched into your soul. I love to be predictable.

Rangitata Valley is vast and wild

But travel, real, soul-deep travel, is never just about chasing cheap flights or ticking off destinations. It’s about the way the world leaves fingerprints on your spirit. Sometimes it’s as simple as sharing a meal of Pad Thai on a humid street corner in Thailand. Other times, it’s strolling down a street corner in Porto looking for a bookshop. And occasionally, it’s something more intimate. A long-held dream unfolding before your very eyes.

New Zealand was that dream for me. I was just shy of nine when The Fellowship of the Ring was released. Too young to see it in cinemas, I first watched it huddled at a girls’ sleepover, the only one awake, face pressed close to the screen, utterly transfixed. I knew I was changed. The story lingered, but even more so, the landscapes. Jagged mountains veiled in mist, golden plains stretching into forever, places that felt real and mythic all at once.

It became tradition: each year, my sister and I would rewatch the trilogy with my mum, and later, I started doing the same with Sam who will occasionally permit the extended editions. Those films became more than stories; they became maps of longing. As I grew up, I carried those places inside me, not just as movie backdrops, but as real lands calling me home.

Mount Sunday stands isolated and wind-battered in the middle of the valley

For years I planned to go. I built itineraries, calculated budgets, opened tabs I never closed. But life kept getting in the way. It was too far, too expensive, too hard to do "properly." I wanted to wait until I could do it right.

Then finally, in January this year, we did it. Sam and I landed in New Zealand, picked up our campervan, and began the kind of journey I had been dreaming of for two decades: a road trip through Middle-Earth and beyond, threading together cinematic landmarks and raw natural beauty in equal measure.

Our first destination: the Rangitata Valley, deep in the South Island. We were headed for Mount Sunday, the windswept hill that Peter Jackson transformed into Edoras, the capital of Rohan. Of all the locations on our route, this was the one I had yearned to see most. A solitary hill, standing alone in a glacial valley, crowned with a hall once built for kings. The hall is no longer there, a set purely built for filming, but the marks and scars of the build are etched into the rock at the top. Sat alongside marks etched by glaciers an age ago. It always felt like a place both real and imagined, and now, at last, I would stand on it.

If you squint you can just about make out Mount Sunday past the green fields

After 25 bone-rattling kilometres down a gravel road, seriously it was awful, we turned a bend, and there she was. Mount Sunday, bathed in sunlight, cradled by the valley like something sacred. She looked smaller than I expected, but more perfect. Not grand, but elemental. As if she'd always been there, waiting.

We camped overnight at Mount Potts Lodge, just a few kilometres away which is a peaceful, beautiful place I’d recommend a hundred times over. That night, tucked into our campervan for the first time, I lay awake buzzing with anticipation for a short while. What if it wasn’t like I imagined? What if the views didn’t match the film? What if the magic was just something I’d invented?

But the next morning it was the kind of morning that makes you believe the earth is still alive and listening, that Mother Nature hasn't completely abandoned us yet. The sun was low and golden, the air crisp with a trace of summer warmth. Dew glittered on the grasses. The river, usually swollen in winter, was now a gentle ribbon carving through the valley. Mother nature had created the most perfect setting, and it felt like it was just for us.

The morning couldn't have been more perfect

The hike to the summit took only 25 minutes, a slow, reverent ascent. Finally, we reached the top.

With no buildings or other people in site you felt truly in the wilds

It’s difficult to explain what it feels like to stand on that hill. The view is utterly endless, sweeping and cinematic, yes, but also deeply still and wild. You look out over that flat valley floor, hemmed in by jagged mountains that rise like ancient guardians. There are no buildings in sight, no evidence of the modern world. Just silence. Space. Sky. You realise how far you are from everything, and how close you are to something essential.

The landscape here is unlike anywhere else I’ve been. It feels carved from time itself, a valley hollowed by glaciers and softened by wind. In the centre of it all, this one hill, Mount Sunday, standing alone as if chosen.

I had brought with me one small ritual. A promise, really. To stand on the peak and listen to The King of the Golden Hall, Howard Shore’s score from The Two Towers. Sam, ever patient with my Tolkienian whims, gave me those sacred three minutes. I pressed play. I stood still.

And I wept.

The music filled my ears. The wind danced around me. The sun warmed my cheeks. And I wept for the beauty of it. For the raw, staggering wonder of being here, in this place that had whispered to me for so long. I wept for the younger versions of myself who had dreamed this dream so vividly, and for the version of me now, older, humbled, holding it all in her hands. I wept for the ache of knowing that some moments change you so profoundly whilst you have no say in the matter, there is no going back. After all, “How could the world go back to the way it was?”

I filmed a short video at the top, no more than 40 seconds. I posted it to Instagram, soundtrack and all. And on days when I need reminding of who I am and where I’ve been, I watch it. I let it carry me back, not just to the tangible nature of the memory such as the view, but to the bone deep feeling. That untouchable thing that only certain places and moments can give you. That is was travel is, a connection to your destination. A tie that leaves you moored to it for the rest of your life.

There’s a part of me still there, I think. I know. On that hill. Listening to the wind and the music, looking out across the bones of the Earth. She calls to me, gently but insistently. And one day, I’ll return and reunite with the version of me I left there. But she's happy, home and perfectly content to wait for me.

But until then, I carry it with me. That moment, that magic, that mountaintop that changed me.

Helena

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