Friday 21 October – Hobbit town (Hobbiton)
It is hard to believe we have been here 2 weeks now we have seen so much already and there is so much more to see so after another lovely breakfast it was time to leave Waihi Beach and continue our journey. We are heading to Rotorua but before we get there we were booked onto a tour of Hobbiton which is the movie set built for the Hobbit movies. It was only a couple of hours to Hobbiton, and the countryside we drive through is very much like England with very green rolling hills, also in the 2 weeks we have been here a lot of the blossom has come out and we drove past a number of trees covered In wonderful cherry blossom. It would seem that the set was temporary for the lord of the rings trilogy, and when they came back to film the Hobbit the Alexander family suggested making the set permanent and opening it as a tourist attraction, Peter Jackson agreed but had taken a 50% stake, having said that they seem to be very busy, most of the tours we saw had about 30 people on them and a tour left every 15 minutes! All the same it was a great tour, you walk into middle earth the same way as Gandalf arrives and all the hobbit holes look so realistic it is like all the hobbits ran away when the ‘big people’ came leaving the washing hanging on the line. The only way in is to have a tour and they give you background information on the filing, for example the tree above Bag End is actually artificial, it had 140,000 hand made leaves attached to it by wires and apparently when Peter Jackson first saw it he thought that they were the wrong colour so they were repainted! None of the hobbit holes actually have rooms inside as all the interior filming was done in a studio so they could control the light but some do have details in the windows for example the cheese makers hole has cheese making equipment in the window then cheese for sale outside. We walked all round the village, up to Bag End, past Samwise’s house, round the party field and finally to the Green Dragon for a drink which is brewed especially for Hobbiton and was actually very nice. The whole trip took 2 hours and is well worth it especially as you get to see the different sized Hobbit holes used to make Gandalf look big and others that the Hobbits would use. We finished the tour about 2pm and set off for Rotorua and a relax before going off to find dinner.
