Friday, 10 June: The last full moon before Lithe

On this day, in 2941 T.A., the last full moon before midsummer's eve shone over Middle-earth.

Note that May has 30 days in the Shire Reckoning, therefore, we are now one weekday off from the days of 2017.

Full moon over Rhudaur. Photo by the author.

In the 1966 Hobbit, Bilbo, Gandalf and the Dwarves are still crawling slow-motion towards Rivendell, though quite little text emendations would have made the final timetable more plausible. As a desperate compromise between text and map, Karen Fonstad made them arrive on 04 June already, arguing that time passes differently at Elvish places and Bilbo might have been out of reckoning. J.R.R. Tolkien, however, discusses the point in notes published by John Rateliff that had not been available yet when Fonstad published her "Atlas". He settled explicitly with 15 June as the presumable date of arrival before he decided to blur the issue.

This way or that, it is a pity that he did not stuck with the 1960 timetable and discarded an internal consistency that he had already achieved.