Our first stop was just outside Matamata about 120 miles from Auckland at the Hobbiton Movie Set. We'd prebooked a 12 noon tour and made it with about 30 minutes to spare. The movie set is on a very large sheep farm (yes our first glimpse of sheep was here!!!) which fulfilled Peter Jackson's requirements for rolling hills, a large lake and a big tree. When they used it for the Lord of the Rings films, the farmer had never heard of the books and the rugby was on so he just told the scouts to go and look themselves. The Shire was then constructed as a temporary set. When they came back to use it for the Hobbit trilogy, the farmer consented on the condition that they built it as a permanent feature, so now the whole town is there to be visited. The gardens around the Hobbit houses are just amazing with so much fruit and veg. growing. You can just view it as a beautiful landscape garden with queer little houses in it!!! Anyway, we toured around all of them and saw the big tree that grows above and over Bilbo's house. It is totally fake, though amazingly realistic, because they had to make it bigger and smaller for the passage of time between the films. We walked in the Party Field, saw the fences Bilbo leaps to catch the dwarfs in the opening film and heard lots of tales about the filming. All really enjoyable. Our tour ended with a free drink in the Inn of the Green Dragon which was lakeside. Very well created and themed and the beer was amazing!!!! Several different brews to choose from and they were STRONG. We helped ours go down with a slice of pork pie each and I have to say it was the best pork pie we have ever eaten that Bob didn't make. Lots of flavour, big chunks of meat and lots of lovely proper jelly. We did a bit of dressing up for the camera of course. A really worthwhile visit and so glad we did it. They've done a brilliant job.