Location from The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
The pastoral homeland of the Hobbits — a pocket of green innocence insulated from the wars and darkness consuming the rest of Middle-earth.
The Shire smells of pipe-weed smoke and fresh-cut hay and bread cooling on windowsills. Birdsong is the loudest sound most days — that, and the distant clang of a blacksmith or the laughter of children splashing in a stream. The air is mild in every season, as if the weather itself has agreed to be reasonable. There is a deep, humming contentment to the place, a warmth that seeps into your bones if you sit still long enough. But there is also a peculiar insularity. Hobbits regard anything beyond the borders with polite suspicion. News from the outside world arrives late and garbled, if it arrives at all. The Brandywine Bridge is as far as most Shire-folk ever travel. This ignorance is both the Shire's charm and its vulnerability — evil could march to its borders and the residents would still be debating the proper time for elevenses. The land itself feels protected, as if something unseen has been keeping the darkness at bay. That protection is more literal than most Hobbits realize.
Rolling green hills stitched with hedgerows and low stone walls. Round doors painted in cheerful colors set into grassy hillsides. Patchwork farmland stretching to every horizon — wheat fields, vegetable gardens, orchards heavy with apples. Narrow lanes winding between hobbit-holes with smoking chimneys. The Water flowing lazily through the middle of it all. Everything is small-scale, tended, and impossibly green.
Also known as: The Shire, Shire, the Four Farthings, Hobbiton country