Such is my luck that the night before my trip to Matamata, home of Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee, my camera decided to pack up and break. No warning, it would never be that courteous, no it just refused to focus on anything despite my attempts to mend it by removing the battery. That's the extent of my camera skills so I was very disgruntled and starting to wonder at my luck with such pieces of electrical equipment. I think I would have been a lot less annoyed had I mistreated it, bashed it around a bit or dropped it but I hadn't so all I can assume is that somewhere there is an evil camera god laughing at my misfortune and gathering the little camera souls I leave strewn in my wake across the globe. Fingers crossed I can get it mended under warranty when I get home, it's only 8 months old the damn thing!

Trusty old sony ericsson would have to suffice as my camera for the day, and I have to admit it served me well although I'll have to wait until I get home to upload the photos of the joyous morning I spent in Hobbiton. It's quite expensive to visit the set where Lord of the Rings was filmed, and only since they filmed The Hobbit film have they kept the sets and made it a permanent feature of the landscape of the sheep farm it was created on. I think if I'd have visited before they rebuilt the set I'd have been pretty disappointed. Luckily for me Peter Jackson created a more permanent set for Martin Freeman to act in and Hobbiton more than lived up to my expectations. It looks exactly like it does in the films, unsurprisingly, and I'll be damned if I know how they make the grass so green. I think they secretly spray paint it an extra vivid shade. The whole set itself is relatively large, including the Green Dragon pub which is currently being made into a licensed bar - how gutted am I that it wasn't completed in time for my arrival! The bridge, mill, Proudfoots vegetable patch, party tree, Sam's hobbit hole all were there, built by Peter Jackson's crew over a period of 8 months (I think) and only used for filming for about ten days for the Hobbit film. I was amazed when our tour guide, Uncle Ben, told us that it cost about 3 million to build the sets, ouch.

My amazement was further compounded when you realise that the sets themselves are just shells - you can't go inside the hobbit holes and there is nothing behind the doors. Despite that the detail is mindblowing - curtains and flowers in the windows, little chairs and wheelbarrows outside, and lichen that was made using textured paint. Nothing is as it seems - particularly the tree above Bag End, home of Bilbo and Frodo, which, since the original one in the LOTR films was chopped up for firewood, is actually made of fiberglass for the new Hobbit film and the leaves are fake and imported from Taiwan, haha. It's a bit surreal knowing that most of the things you're looking at are all fake despite your eyes telling you they aren't and there are living rooms and dining tables laden down with second breakfast inside. I think I was most excited about seeing Bag End, the fabled home of the stars of the books, Bilbo and Frodo Baggins, and I have to admit to being thoroughly enchanted and wanting to live in it when we got there.

The perspective in the place is a little strange, some hobbit holes are small, probably about child size, whilst others are normal person size, and the roof of the Green Dragon slopes downwards at a steep angle, all part of Peter Jackson's ingenious use of perspective to make the hobbits seem smaller than the rest of the inhabitants of Middle Earth. According to Uncle Ben (I can't help but think of the rice) there were three extras for each hobbit character, ranging in size from small to average height, so whilst you'd see the back of a small hobbit extra entering a hobbit door, Elijah Wood would come through the door on a soundstage. All very clever these directors!

A few people in the hostel asked me whether I thought it was worthwhile going to visit the film set, and I would say that if you're a fan of the books and films then yes it's money well spent, but otherwise just watch the films and save yourself fifty quid. Personally it was probably the best morning I spent in the North Island and has made me want to be a film extra for a few days to experience being on a proper working film set - hey, a girl can dream!

Becca