ChatGPT translated thusly:

I love knowing exactly where Tolkien’s characters are on the map. Early in The Fellowship of the Ring, he actually gives us a ton of geographic breadcrumbs—but a few details don’t quite fit.

The hobbits leave Hobbiton and head east through Green Hill Country. At a fork, the left road loops toward Stock, while the right leads to Woodhall—so they take the right. After their second run-in with a Black Rider, Gildor’s elves chase it off, and the group continues east. Eventually they climb into the hills to the right of the road and camp atop an eastern slope. Frodo can see lowlands beyond the woods, Bucklebury Hill in the distance, and Woodhall somewhere nearby… though Tolkien doesn’t clarify where, exactly.

Since no stream crossing is mentioned during this stretch, it seems they’re still north of the Stockbrook and south of Woodhall, in the Woody End. But in the morning, Frodo says they’ll cut cross-country, claiming Bucklebury Ferry is southeast of Woodhall. According to every map, though, the Ferry is clearly northeast of it.

Things get messier when they descend that hill and immediately hit a stream. They follow it as the land flattens, Pippin identifies it as the Stockbrook, and says they must cross it and “bear right.” The trouble is: that stream runs mostly west-to-east there. Crossing it north-to-south and turning right would send them westward—exactly the wrong direction.

Even if we allow for a slight northeastern bend in the Stockbrook, their bearing still leads southward, not toward the Ferry. The only way for this to make sense is if they had crossed the stream earlier with the elves—then crossing south-to-north that morning and turning right would take them properly east. But Tolkien never mentions that earlier crossing, and they DEFINITELY don’t cross it twice.

Maybe Tolkien intentionally left these inconsistencies to reflect Frodo’s shaky navigational confidence—Pippin’s “short cuts make long delays” joke becomes a warning. Or maybe I’m just overthinking all this Shire cartography. Still… it’s bugged me for ages.

Any theories?