Lucy goes around the World in 88 days: Day 51, 52 & 53

Day 51: Sunday 17th August
After all the travelling around England during the last few days, Miss Hannaford and I decided to spend the day resting at the hotel and catching up on these blog posts. It is also very cold at the moment in England. The English summertime is very different to Australian summer in that it rains nearly every day and the temperature can be very cold with daytime maximums reaching 20 degrees unlike Australia where the summer temperature reaches 40!

Day 52 & 53: Monday and Tuesday 18/19th August.
Miss Hannaford spent more time working on her research at the Wedgwood Museum Archives. She was really excited to find a new piece of Egyptian Style Wedgwood from 1930 that she had never heard of before and better still, she was allowed to touch a piece of it before it was put safely away in the museum!

Miss Hannaford tells me we are doing something different tomorrow so I can’t wait!

– Lucy

Lucy goes around the world in 88 days: Day 50

Day 50: Saturday 16th August
Today Miss Hannaford and I travelled by train to Warner Bros Film Studios in Leavesden where all of the Harry Potter films were made. From the train station you travel on special Harry Potter double decker buses that look similar to the purple Knight Bus and when you get off the bus, the first thing from the film you see are the giant chess pieces from the first film!

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Something you need to know is that the buildings (called Stages) that you see in the pictures are not the sound stages used for shooting the eight films. The Warner Bros studio is still a fully function film studio and so new buildings have been built and the sets, costumes and props have been moved here. When we walked into J Stage- you have to line up so you get to see all the great photos on the wall as well as one of the flying Ford Anglia cars used in the second film!

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After a short film- they reveal the spectacular doors to the Great Hall which then people are invited to push open to reveal the real Great Hall (minus the magical ceiling)!

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You get to see lots of props, sets and costumes from every film throughout Stage J. I really liked the Griffyndor Common Room, Dumbledore’s Office and the area where you get to see broom sticks being made by the actual people who made all the broomsticks for the films!

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The next set we got to see was the kitchen of The Burrow where you can see self chopping knifes, pans that was themselves and knitting needles doing their own knitting!

The last thing you see before you leave Studio J are some of the sets from the Ministry of Magic for films 5,6,7. Only some of them are here because they are enormous! They go from the floor to the ceiling which is 5 storeys high!

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When you leave Studio J, you walk into the outdoor backlot area where you can see 4 Privet Drive, the actual Knight Bus, the wonky Hogwarts Bridge and more of the chess pieces!

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The next studio is Studio K and you start by seeing all the amazing makeup and animatronic creatures including Buckbeak the Hippogriff, Mandrakes, Monster Book of Monsters. You can see them in this video.

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The next space you walk into is the actual set of Diagon Alley! This space is different from the Diagon Alley we experienced in Orlando, Florida USA. Here you are not allowed to go into the shops like Ollivanders or Flourish & Blotts but it is nice to compare the two versions of the Alley and how accurate the Florida attraction really is!

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The last room is a room full of wandboxes that looks like Ollivander’s wand shop. Each box has the name of someone who worked on the films either behind the camera or in front of the camera.

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It was a really exciting day and we had so much fun!
– Lucy

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