For once, Matt woke way before me! He was up, showered, dressed and had breakfast all before 7.30am. He was desperate to go to Hobbiton today, I've never seen him so eager for anything. He called the Hobbiton reception bang on 8.00am when it opened and managed to get us a cancellation slot at 11.05 that morning! He skipped back to the Campervan to tell me the good news!

We chilled at the campsite in the sun with endless cups of tea before making our 20 minute journey to Hobbiton. We experienced absolute bedlam at reception, people were near tears because they weren't able to get tickets! One family of 5 arrived late so missed their bus and they were all begging the manager to let them go, one actually started crying...I've never seen anything so ridiculous!

The bus took us around the Alexander Farm owned strangely enough by the Alexander family. Peter Jackson had seen the farm of over 2000 acres from a helicopter and knew instantly he wanted to base Hobbiton there. He originally had 11 other settings in New Zealand planned out but he scraped them all and decided to film the whole of Hobbiton at Alexander Farm. For the filming of Lord of the Rings, they used all temporary materials and when the filming was over, they knocked most of it down. When they returned for the filming of The Hobbit, the Alexander family collaborated with Peter Jackson to make an exact replica set but this time using permanent materials. That is what still stands today for people like us to see.

I've seen a few of the films and I vaguely know some of the characters so I was a bit sceptical about how much I'd actually enjoy it and at one point, I even considered not going! Thank GOD I did! It was amazing, I absolutely loved seeing all the little hobbit houses and miniature props. Matt was that annoying fanatic in the group of about 20 that knew the answers to all the questions. I'm not sure whether I was actually proud or not! At the end of the tour, we were given a complimentary beer and cider that are especially brewed by the Alexander family and only sold at the famous Green Dragon. It was a lovely way to end the tour and I would definitely recommended going to anyone!

That afternoon we drove to Hamilton and had a look around the town centre. Bizarrely, everywhere was shut and the centre was dead. With this, we decided to spend the rest of our afternoon in one of the libraries. We had a lot to plan and organise with the rest of our trip as after Fiji, we didn't know where we were going. We spent the afternoon researching with a plan to book tomorrow. We still had a lot to sort out but it was all exciting stuff!

We spent that night in a free car park called Ngaruawahia memorial reserve, 20 minutes away from the library. We made some delicious pasta and dived into one of the many bars of chocolate we had. Unfortunately, the public toilets closed at 8pm until 8am... this could be an interesting night!