Around 9:30am we set off for Hobbiton
for our pre-booked 11am tour. We, however, missed the turning [even with both a
map and a sat nav] and only arrived at 11:05am. I went in rather sheepishly and
asked if we could just hop onto the next tour, the next tour, however, was
fully booked, as was the next. We finally got two places on the 12:15pm tour
which gave us chance to make a coffee; buy, write and post some postcards and
other little bits we wanted to do. 12:10pm came and we head to the main road at
the front of the ticket office to be collected for our tour. It starts with a
stunning 10 minute drive through 1250 acres of farmland; as we were there in
September it was lambing season, and when they say there are more sheep than
people they mean it. There are millions of little white fluffy clouds
frolicking all over the fields.
We had a rather chirpy guide called
William who was great. Well informed and also brought a sense of comedy into
the tour. We all disembarked at the ‘Welcome to Hobbiton’ sign and joined the queue
to wait for the hordes of tourists to take their picture with said sign (we
also did this so cannot moan). You start with an introduction from your guide
to the first hobbit houses and spend a while taking in the view – we were very
fortunate as the weather was glorious, not a cloud in sight and the green
rolling hills were luscious. I’m not going to go into a lot of detail about
what you are shown as it will spoil the surprise! The price is quite steep, I
must admit. BUT if you spend the time and drive to The Shire’s Rest (501
Buckland Road is the given address, however if you tune this into your sat nav
it’s actually about 1km further on down the road) rather than starting the tour
in Matamata you can save around $75. If you are not a diehard LOTR fan then you
could probably give this a miss as it won’t mean much to you, but if, like me,
you are pretty obsessed and can finish any quote and can instantly recognise a
particular Hobbit’s house then it is a MUST. Also, quite handy to know, your
ticket price includes a cheeky drink (ale/cider/beer/ginger beer) in the
legendary ‘The Green Dragon’ to finish off your tour!
Hopping off the tour bus we had a
quick browse around the shop and bought a few souvenirs and pretty swiftly we
were on our way to our next destination.
Rotorua
We didn’t actually venture into
Rotorua town itself but we drove around it, and by god you can tell it is a
thermal hot spot – it stinks. We took a longer scenic drive to our campsite and
stopped off for a spot of lunch at a tavern on SH1, just after the turning for
Waikite Valley Thermal Pools. This was our campsite for the night, it cost $30
for the night for a powered site and included free access to all six thermal
pools ranging from 32’C – 42’C. The first pool is drained at 8:30pm and all are
emptied by 9:15pm. This time, however, it is still open to the public – I
suggest getting up early your next morning and braving the cold for an early
morning soak. We went about 7am [it doesn’t open to the public until 10am] and
it was great, we first tried the 32’C pool as we thought with the difference in
temperature from the bitter wind we had best take it slow. This proved
pointless as in the end we just went straight into the 39’-42’C and by god it
was great, soaking away the aches and pains from another night sleeping in a
chilly campervan.
[Note: There is a café and restaurant
available at this site, serving hot meals and alcohol too. We didn’t get there
in time as it closes at 7pm but when we first walked past the food looked good,
though the wine was a little expensive at $28 for a bottle, but it’s better
than nothing!]
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