Hobbiton, shhhhhh

Dear all

I managed to start the day in a lovely hot mineral swimming pool as the campsite we stayed at last night had springs in the grounds Yippee. It was lovely to sit in the early morning sun with steam gently rising around you from your 39 degree pool.

Once I had dragged myself out of the pool we headed off to town where I was booked on the tour of Hobbiton - the village from LOTR no less. As you may remember I had tried to do this on the way down the north Island, but had not realised that the tour was a) private b) expensive c) long, So here I was on take two will my money, the morning & an empty SD card ready to get my $66 worth!!

Imagine my surprise when I got there to find that they were about to start filming The Hobbit there and we had to sign disclaimers agreeing not to post any photos or discuss anything we have seen on the 'location'. I guess this is until the film is released, then it doesn't matter. So sorry you will have to skype me if you really need to know or wait for the film LOL!

Suffice to say the place was amazing as the set was literally 3 days away from filming so everything was done down to the last detail including the tiny piles of logs outside the doors. What amazed me was that everything was completely real, even the fruit on all the trees. Well Ok the lichen on the fences was made up, but you can't grow that in situ in 3 months!

Dean had stayed behind in Matamata to have a wander & as I got back it started to rain & boy it didn't stop! It carried on whilst we had lunch and all the way to Hamilton, En route we drove through Tirau,which has a strange addiction to corrugated iron, even some of the buidings are fashioned with it & I mean fashioned!

 

We finally reached rainy Hamilton, where Dean stopped off and had a reminisce at the cricket ground and treated himself to a Knights one day shirt. It is the most garish pink you have ever seen! You certainly will see him coming down the street when he wears it oh well I suppose it’s better than him wearing a pink Middlesex shirt! LOL

It was still raining & raining & raining so we headed to a site and huddled and watched movies for the evening..... Guess what? It had to be LOTR - yep!

Tomorrow we held to our final port of call, Auckland to stay with another Barmy Army friend Michael aka Bikini!

Nite all