A middle earth fan who travelled with eight friends to throw a ring into Mount Vesuvius has built himself a hobbit hole which he lives in as part of a plan to completely recreate a hobbit village in the real world.

He shared the footage of his Fellowship of the Ring adventure to the top of his local ‘Mount Doom’, on Instagram, where it has notched up over 124,000 views in just a few days.

Nicolas Gentile, 37, decided to build his own version of the Shire, the place known as the homeland of the majority of hobbits living in J. R. R. Tolkien’s ‘Middle Earth’, in the picturesque village of Bucchianico, which is located just a half an hour’s drive from the city of Chieti in the Abruzzo region in Italy.

Nicolas, who decided to build a hobbit burrow similar to the ones in ‘Middle Earth’, documents his everyday life as a hobbit on his Instagram page.

His latest adventure – and his biggest milestone as a real-life hobbit – is the journey he took with a group of eight friends who were dressed like the characters from the movies and who travelled from the ‘Shire’ in Chieti to Mount Vesuvius in Naples to recreate the famous scene from the movies when the One Ring belonging to the evil Lord Sauron is ‘thrown’ into Mount Doom.

He said that he had always been interested in fantasy literature, video games and music but always thought of ways to include more fantasy moments into his everyday life.

He said: “At some point in my life, I felt like I was living the adventures of others and not my own. I decided that I, too, would live my life like a character in the movies and books I loved so much.”

While working as a pastry chef in Abruzzo, Nicolas realised that his surroundings, which included rolling hills, woods, rivers, and ancient villages were very similar to the ones in the Shire.

In 2018, using almost all of his life savings, he bought around two acres of land where he built a hobbit house for him and his family.

He spends time with there friends and family, dresses like a hobbit and shares what real-life hobbits do during their downtime with his social media followers.

With the help of his family, he is working on creating an entire hobbit village which would be called “Gentile County”. He wants to have a large underground home and four smaller houses where other families could reside.

Working on his idea, Nicolas adds that he does not plan to turn his village into a tourist sight, but create a space for fantasy enthusiasts like him. He said: “All I want is to meet people like me, who have the same magic in their eyes and a love for the simple things in life, who enjoy dinner with friends and an adventure in the woods now and then.”

Mount Vesuvius erupted on 26th August 79 AD, destroying the Roman city of Pompeii. It last erupted in 1944.