New Zealand - North Island

---

Hi everyone, well we've been to HOBBITON, I must have taken about 50,000 photos and I haven't even seen the films or read the books, but I will now !!, so I have clicky clicked all of these for Emma, Zoe and Joel who I believe are Hobby Hobbiton's !!! It was such a good tour walking around the hobbit holes and having cider in The Green Dragon Inn.

So we arrived at the site late morning, near Matamata, it was also raining and we were really early so managed to get onto an earlier tour, they bus you onto the sites which are about a mile away from the entrance. The driver explained that in September 1998 Sir Peter Jackson discovered Alexandra Farm during an aerial search for suitable film sites, where farmland was transformed into The Shire. This is a real farm, has about 13,000 sheep and tons of cattle, then in March 1999, construction started, involving heavy earthmoving machinery provided by the New Zealand Army who built a 1.5 km road into the site. 39 hobbit holes were made with untreated timber, ply and polystyrene. The large oak tree that overlooks Bag End was cut down and brought in from nearby Matamata. They brought in artificial leaves and wired them into the tree,. The Mill and double arch bridge were built out of scaffolding, ply and polystyrene and the Thatch roofs of The Green Dragon and The Mill were cut rushes from around Alexander farm. When The Hobbit Trilogy was filmed in 2009, these structures were then built out of permanent materials including an artificial tree made out of steel and silicon above Bag End, this whole construction took 2 years. Also filming of The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy commenced in December 1999, and continued for 3 months. The Hobbit Trilogy began in October 2011 and took only 12 days to film. At its peak, 400 people were on site, now a days they have 4 gardeners on site working, to tend to the garden where they grow real veg. There are now 44 hobbit holes because whenever they panned the camera round, they could see the Hobbit Holes instead of nothing. Also some of the little gates and hobbit fences had yogurt smeared all over them because when it dried it gave the appearance of ageing. When Peter Jackson obtained this site, it became a 'No Fly' zone, two pilots were caught flying over to have a nose and ended up having their licences confiscated.

Gotta say, the Alexandra Farm must be rubbing their hands, what a money spinner, just bus loads are brought in, up to 1500 a day and at 75 dollars a pop, can't be bad. ( just over 32 pounds roughly). There house is on top of the hill, they must be looking down thinking more dollars in the bank !!! I would !!!

It was a throughly good tour, with views across to the Kaimai Ranges, we really enjoyed it, then I had a cider and Stu had an ale in The Green Dragon Inn, so cute. Absolutely stunning scenary around us and as we started our tour the sun came out so it was pretty amazing. I will put up some photos for you Hobbiton's and then some more tomorrow otherwise I will use all the wi - fi up, hopefully I will have a lot more wi fi time tomorrow. You will be able to recognise the Hobbit Holes, homes to little hobbits like Bilbo, Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin and the party field where Bilbo had his 11 TY first birthday. There is also the gate where Bilbo started off his adventure and the gardens of Bagshot Row. Hope you Hobbiton's can reconise the photo's I have taken.

---