The Great East Road

The Road begins at the Grey Havens on the Gulf of Lune, climbs over the Tower Hills and the Far Downs, and runs east across the Shire through Michel Delving, past the turnings for Hobbiton and Bywater, through Frogmorton and Whitfurrows to the Brandywine Bridge. Beyond the river it skirts the northern edge of the Old Forest and the Barrow-downs and comes to Bree, where it crosses the Greenway, the old North Road. East of Bree it enters the Lone-lands, running past the Forsaken Inn, along the edge of the Midgewater Marshes, under the shadow of Weathertop and through the empty country to the Last Bridge over the Hoarwell. It threads the Trollshaws to the Ford of Bruinen and ends, for most travellers, at Rivendell; but an older track continues up to the High Pass and down into the vale of Anduin.

The Road was built in the Second Age, when the Elves of Lindon and the Dwarves of the Blue Mountains had business with Eregion and Moria, and it was the spine of Arnor, which kept its bridges and set watch-towers along it. By the end of the Third Age it was maintained by no one but the hobbits, who kept the Shire's stretch in repair as their ancient grant required, and by the Rangers who watched it.

The Road carried the history of the North along it. Elendil's messengers used it; Arthedain's armies marched along it to the Weather Hills; the Great Plague came up it from the south. Dwarves travelling between the Blue Mountains and the Iron Hills used it in every age, and it was on the Road near Bree that Gandalf met Thorin Oakenshield in March 2941 and the Quest of Erebor began. Bilbo and the dwarves followed it east that spring as far as the Trollshaws.

In September and October 3018 the Road was hunted ground. The Black Riders rode it in both directions, and Frodo kept off it wherever he could, taking the Old Forest and the Barrow-downs instead of the stretch from the Bridge to Bree and the marshes and hills instead of the stretch from Bree to Weathertop. His company returned to the Road only for the last miles to the Ford, where the Riders caught them. A year later the four hobbits and Gandalf rode home along it from Rivendell to Bree and to the Bridge, where they found a spiked gate and Shirriffs barring the way. In the Fourth Age the Road became once more the King's highway between Annúminas and the East.

From the Grey Havens east over the Tower Hills, across the Shire and the Brandywine Bridge, past the Barrow-downs to Bree, then through the Lone-lands past Weathertop to the Last Bridge, the Trollshaws and the Ford of Bruinen; continued by a track over the High Pass to Wilderland.