In Disney’s new blockbuster The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, four young siblings use a wardrobe door to travel from wartime England to the mythical landscapes of Narnia, the fairy-tale world made famous by British novelist C.S. Lewis.
And for movie and literary pilgrims in search of real-life Narnias, the celluloid version of Lewis’ classic already is sparking related tours in England, Northern Ireland and New Zealand, where several key locations were filmed.
In the author’s birthplace of Belfast, Northern Ireland, Harper Taxi Tours plans to supplement its politically themed itineraries with a C.S. Lewis tour. Stops will include Lewis’ childhood church, St. Mark’s, and the Victorian home, Little Lea, in whose “Little End Room” the young author concocted his first stories while gazing at the Mourne Mountains — “which under a particular light,” he wrote, “made me feel that at any moment a giant might raise his head over the next ridge.”
Elsewhere in Northern Ireland, visitors to Crawfordsburn Country Park can see the lamppost that inspired the one in Narnia, and the 17th-century Dunluce Castle on the Antrim Coast, believed to be the basis for Cair Paravel, the royal fortress in Narnia.
Though a northerner at heart, Lewis, who died in 1963, spent most of his adulthood in southern England, including Oxford, where he studied, taught and downed so many pints at the Eagle and Child pub that a special “C.S. Lewis chair” is dedicated to his memory.
In New Zealand — where, thanks to the Lord of the Rings trilogy, locals are already accustomed to hordes of costume-clad tourists seeking magical scenery — Canterbury Sightseeing is launching Narnia tours to the film’s climactic battle scene at Flock Hill Station, near Christchurch.
“It is incredible how nostalgia affects people,” Canterbury Sightseeing director Melissa Heath told The New Zealand Herald. “People are prepared to pay an incredible amount of money to revisit their memories.”
