Where To Go For The Most Magical Harry Potter Road Trip Experience

 

Are you part of the Harry Potter fandom? Time Warner’s Harry Potter tour alone earned over $430 million from 2012 to 2017, according to Forbes. The film series based on J.K. Rowling’s best-selling books was filmed throughout the UK including London, Oxford, and Scotland. One way to relive the movies is by taking a geeky road trip to visit various filming locations, which can be as fun as a video game-inspired road trip. Here are the locations, sites and routes that can put you inside the magical world so you can channel your inner Harry, Ron, or Hermione.

 

Proper preparation is important before going on your road trip, and that includes getting a new or used car for your travels. Make sure the vehicle gets a complete tune-up that includes checking oil levels, headlights, and windshield wipers. It’s also important to choose a route and plan for stops. England’s capital city is the most practical starting point for your trip, and this includes a stop at King’s Cross Station. Here, you can find Platform 9 3/4, which is between platforms 9 and 10. This is where Harry Potter used his luggage trolley to enter the movies’ universe of witches and wizards. The actual filming location of the Platform 9 ¾ scene was shot between platforms 4 and 5. You can take a selfie reenacting the famous scenes from the films, or have a professional photograph taken while wearing a scarf in your house colors.

 

Apart from King’s Cross, there are other filming locations that are also worth visiting while in London. This includes Leadenhall Market and Borough Market. These locations have doors that functioned as the Leaky Cauldron entrance. Another item to add to your bucket list is a walk over Millennium Bridge. The Death Eaters destroyed this structure in The Half Blood Prince.  

 

After London, you can take a two-hour trip to Lacock to visit Lacock Abbey, which functioned as Budleigh Babberton in The Half Blood Prince. You can also visit Harry Potter’s parents’ house in this area, which was shown in The Philosopher’s Stone. Next, stop by Oxford. You can find several major filming locations here. For example, Christ Church is one of the university’s colleges. This is where they filmed the interior shots of Hogwarts school. You can also see staircases and hallways where other scenes were shot.   

 

Other places that you can check out include Divinity School that served as Hogwarts’ infirmary, and it’s also where the dancing scene between Professor McGonagall and Ron in The Goblet of Fire was filmed. Don’t miss the Duke Humfrey’s Library, which is located right above Divinity School. This location was used to film all library scenes, as well as the restricted section scene. Keep in mind that a guided tour is required to enter the library.

 

York is about a three-hour drive from Gloucester, where you can find the Gloucester Cathedral that was featured in the first two films. The York train station bridge functioned as the King’s Cross bridge, and it’s where Hagrid gave Harry a Hogwarts Express ticket on platform 9 ¾. It’s also believed that the medieval street Shambles inspired Rowling for Diagon Alley. You can even find a Harry Potter café in this area that sells potions. After York, you could drop by at other filming locations before returning to London. Spend a day visiting some other famous tourist spots like Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, and the Tower of London.

 

Harry Potter,  just like Star Wars and Avengers, is one of the biggest film franchises in the history of cinema. A road trip is one of the best ways Harry Potter fans can geek out and visit locations like London, Oxford, and York. This fandom trip can be as thrilling as the magical movies themselves.