We decided to go through Tongariro National Park - into the heart of Mordor!! Sorry it's all gone a bit Lord of the Rings! It seemed the obvious choice to have a bit of a LOTR pilgrimage as we were driving straight through many of the film locations. Sadly there was so much low cloud that we didn't see a single glimpse of the volcanoes - Ruapehu or....or...and the other one beginning with an N! But we could see the huge wilderness type area that was used for Mordor.

We stayed at Ohakune which was a very dinky little ski town at the foot of Ruapehu. There's not much happening there in summer but it was cheap and cheerful. We had a drive up the mountain which had great views down but up was only cloud - again!

The next day before hitting the road our LOTR pilgrimage came to a climax with two further highlights! We found the little bit of river that was used in The Twin Towers when Smeagol catches his fish. We crouched down and took pictures of each other pretending to be the little creature - hilarious! Then we went into the Powderhorn Chateau which is where the cast stayed for two stints of filming - for 6 weeks and then 4 weeks. We very sheepishly asked if we could see the visitors book and gushed over Orlando's, Ian's, Elijah's and Peter's signatures and comments! What anoraks!!!