Visiting Hobbiton

I can’t get over the fact that its been a whole 2 months since my trip to New Zealand! It was an incredibly special trip for many reasons, but one of the best things about NZ for me is that its the setting for one of my all time favourite stories, The Lord of the Rings. Better yet, staying with Matthew in Hamilton meant we were less than an hour’s drive from the most spectacular set from the movies: Hobbiton.

Hobbiton Movie Set Tour

I’ve really struggled to choose photos for this post, I took so many – the set is beautiful! What you see hear is what was set up for the Hobbit movies; the original LotR Hobbiton set was stripped down at the end of the filming, leaving just white wooden fronts to the holes, but when it was rebuilt for the latest films, they decided to keep it in all its glory, and its maintained daily by a team of staff. All the vegetables in the patches are grown seasonally, with the exception of potatoes, so everything you see is real!

Hobbiton Movie Set Tour

The only way you can visit the set is by an official tour, where you are guided around Hobbiton and bombarded with amazing facts about the films, and no little detail is missed. You can join one of these tours from three locations: The Shire’s Rest, which is at the entrance to the farm location, the information centre in Matamata, or from Rotorua. If you start your tour at The Shire’s Rest, there’s a great little cafe to feed hungry hobbits, and a fab gift shop full of souvenirs. The tours leave here most frequently, every half an hour, whereas its only every 45 minutes from Matamata, or twice a day from Rotorua. The group sizes are around 20-30 people, but you definitely don’t feel crowded at all cos there is so much to see!

Hobbiton Movie Set Tour

While it is a walking tour, you get the opportunity for a little rest with a visit to the Green Dragon – there’s even a drink included with your ticket! You can have a sit down in front of a real wood fire, befriend Pickles, the local cat, or you can even dress up like a hobbit for photos, should you wish.. All the drinks available (3 alcoholic and 1 non-alcoholic) are brewed specifically for the Inn, so there’s nowhere else in the world you can get them!

Hobbiton Movie Set Tour

And did you know you can get married here, while tours are going on, how crazy is that?!

Every Lord of the Rings fan needs to visit here, so if you’re ever in the area and in need of a brew of the brave and true, you know where you can get it from..

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November 8, 2016Lottie 1 Comment

Three Months of Long Distance

Full story here

Hobbiton selfie

Each time I write one of these posts, I’m a little amazed that a whole month has past since the last, and that’s kinda cool. This month has obviously been a little different from the previous two; its been the best and the worst.

When I say the best, I am, of course, talking about my trip to New Zealand. It was a whole week of being together – the most amount of time we’ve ever been together – and it was perfect. We spent the first few days in Auckland, where we visited the zoo and sealife centre, ate an amazing curry and had a great night out at this little comedy club, before driving down to Rotorua, which was unfortunately where my jet lag really kicked in, so we ended up spending a lot of time watching tv in bed while I napped! We did get to do the luge though, which was a lot of fun and we got to see some stunning views of the area.

After Rotorua, we drove to Hamilton via a jet-boating experience in Taupo, and I finally got to see where Matthew is living and working which was pretty cool. He had to fly one day, which meant I got to have a lazy day of writing, reading magazines in bed and watching funny daytime TV, but we had the evening together so we went to watch Secret Life of Pets and had a Nandos – NB: New Zealand Nandos is not as good as UK Nandos! Monday was Hobbiton day, which was really awesome and I’ll be doing a separate post on that soon, and then Tuesday we headed back to Auckland for a penguin experience at the sealife centre (AMAZING), then spent the day walking around the docks and finished up at the Sky Tower to watch the sunset before driving to the airport. I won’t go into the details of that, but it wasn’t easy to say goodbye.

Since getting home, we’ve had to get back into our previous routine, which has honestly been harder to adjust to than the first time. With weather issues slightly hindering his training, its going to be a little longer until Matt is home, and that’s been difficult for me to get my head around, but I can’t change that so instead I just have to keep looking forward.

From the other side of the world, training for Matthew is really ramping up as he prepares for his first progress test; he’s moving on from the basics to more complex flights, introducing more techniques and more detailed planning, and despite weather recently, NZ is heading into Spring/Summer, so it will be better soon, and the more flights he completes, the closer he is to coming home.

Here’s to the next month flying by!*

*All puns intended.

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September 28, 2016Lottie 1 Comment

An NZ Update!

Hello lovely people!

I’m super jet-lagged and it’s about 5.30am but I just wanted to check in to let anyone who’s interested know that I am safely in New Zealand, yay!

Yesterday, which I think is still English Wednesday when this gets posted, was my first full day and Matthew took me to Auckland Zoo – you know how much I love zoos!

We got to see all the usual suspects – meerkats, giraffes, penguins etc – but also were lucky enough to see one of the red pandas, and also catch a glimpse of a kiwi, and I loved every second of it!

I’m still needing to nap to cope with the tiredness, but after a quick afternoon snooze we went out for dinner at this amazing Indian restaurant, then went to a comedy club for the night which, with the exception of one of the comedians, had me in stitches the whole time!

Tomorrow we’ll be doing some more fun stuff in Auckland, then driving down to Rotoroa, and although I won’t be updating you day to day on this trip (but there’s plenty of other posts going up daily!), I’ll might drop another update in a few days time!