Hobbiton

7am: the Alexander's Farm at Buckland, Matamata.

Just outside Matamata, in the small hamlet of Buckland lies the Alexander's 12,000 acre sheep farm. It is owned by 3 brothers; Russell, who helps out on the tour coach, Craig the sheep farmer and another who has a sheep farm elsewhere. All sounds very much like Riverford so far. It's blindingly beautiful in a rumpy pumpy Devon kind of way and is free of mobile masts, agricultural silos and herbacious borders. Peter Jackson, apparently found this place on an aerial reckee and kept it along with 2 other "hobbtions" early on in the making of LOTR. Eventually, he realised that he had eveything he needed right here, and broke the news to the other two land owners that their hobbitons were surplus to requirements.


I did, kind of want the guide to show us around, with the added challenge of never mentioning the word "hobbit" or "Lord of the Rings" as a kind of dare, but of course I would be a fool of a took to think that could ever be.

Past visitors have included, a group of "elves" who danced non-stop on the lawn under the party tree, a 7ft hobbit ever who spoke elvish, sat under the party tree and read LOTR all day. He refused to budge until they moved him onto the last bus of the day. 

In the café there was an interesting panoramaic photo of farm with architect’s film overlaid and a drawing of hobbiton as it was originally presented to the Alexander family. 

Bear admiring the spray-on lichen which led to a discussion about whether real lichen would grow on top of the fake stuff one day. Probably.

These are the fingermen's huts that until recently had fish hanging outside them.

Don't sit on the props or all hell will break loose.

Folksy iconography on the rustic see-saw. The emeraldy green tree is an Oak imposter!

A lovely curvaceous stile. We might just have to make one for real back home in Devon.

Lovely planting: berrberris, lavender, rosemary, jasmine, nasturtiums and willow hurdles.

Yes, it does look like some of those houses on the way to Buckfastleigh - without the carved wooden bears.

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The people I asked to get out of shot in all the other pictures!

Hobbiton Fact: it is all held together with expanding foam.

We've come from Devon to rightly claim our Hobbit Hole. Merry, Pippin, Flippin, Rippin et al.

One of the few Hobbit holes where the door opens.

Actually, quite a nice, naturally weathered sculpture of Gollom.

Coming over all Ansel Adams at Cathedral Cove

Cathedral Cove on the Coromandel

Someone jumping into my photo.

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I can't help seeing the face of an "Ohhh" ghost to the left of the person who's about to have a date with A & E.

Digs at Cathedral Cove.

More handstand practise

Yay!

I've had many requests for there to be more, or at least some, images of Digs and me on the blog. But I don't want to dissappoint those of you who are enjoying the sublime landscapes without our podgey chops, so I've leave it until my next post from Hobbiton, where my feet have at last found a home, and you can catch us snopping around Bag End. 


The real reason there are no photos of us is, of course, because we haven't got any clean clothes!

Over the Black Jack...to Opito Bay

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Opito Bay

Black Jack's Road must surely be NZ's version of Bolivia' s Road of Death, El Camino del Muerte. I asked a chatty chap at the gift shop in Hot Water beach if the road was ok for a largish camper. Whether there were any dodgy bits to look out for - unsealed sections, sharp bends, steep bits etc. All of them, was his answer. Oh, yes - and he made a sign with his hand shielding his eyes - and when it has all of the above features, there is also a huge vertical drop to the sea below.  


It doesn’t help that our campervan is a bit skitty, even on smooth tarmac. Black Jack's Road goes over 2 saddles and is unselaed in many places (our van responds by wheel spinning in these situations) and has all the road signs that we deliberately and normally choose to avoid on the map: the one with a 4WD symbol up a steep incline to show it’s bloody steep, the one telling you that your lights must be on at all times, another with a huge exclaimation mark to prompt you: do you really know what you're doing, are you qualified? Finally, unless there be a faction or new franchise, called Pirates of the Coromandel that Disney have yet, or should I say "yit" to release, a road sign with a skull and cross bones. To show what? Danger of death, should you foolishly choose to drive on this road after you have seen and not headed these warnings! Double-axled logging trucks also use it at certain points of the day, and I don’t suppose they're going to doing the reversing.



Cushla said she didn’t want to frighten me about the road, once we had arrived at the very last house in Opito Bay. We can forget about all those day trips around the Corromandel though! We’re stocked up for the week with food and I don’t think we’ll be going anywhere unless we can hitch a litft in a 4WD.

John’s family use to own most of the penninsula, when the land was farmed, and his brother still lives nearby. We popped in on his brother George and his lovely bubbly Scottish-kiwi wife, Nina one morning. "I hope you like chocolate cake?" she said to the children. Nina had made the most magnificent chocolate cake for the kids and then let Magi be mum and cut it. It's always interesteing to see how children perceive a small, medium and large slice of cake. Magi lunged in with a knife as big as her arm and cut it into quarters and then served herself first! Digs and Raz went out fishing with George in the Bay that evening and came back with a huge kahwai and Raz caught a 33cm snapper that he was really proud of.

Been reading a locally put together book by current and ex-residents of Opito Bay. Blacks Jack's Road  is referred to in it as one of the 3 most notorious roads in NZ. It used to be so narrow that 2 horses couldn’t pass by each other. Apparently there has never been a fatally on it, but a car did once carelessly fall off the side.

A Giant Horse Mussel Shell





Hot Water Beach

Dig Your Own Hot Tub

Like the Time Team, our first few exploratory trenches didn't turn up what we were expecting, maybe we could have done with that big hairy chap (Mick?), but then we found the scolding seam of water that runs between the high and low tide mark. We dug our sand bath with a sturdy steel shovel and got to enjoy it for about an hour, before the in-coming tide crashed over our sea defences and us. The we remembered the weep holes that are in our wall next to the river at home, used to stop the build-up of water pressure in the river, so we did likewise and bought our sand spa a few extra minutes of time, before it merged completely with the Pacific.

Waiheke Island

 

Stony Batter Rocks

Git off our land - our beach for the week!

We're all missing home a bit at the moment. Bear even said that he wanted to go to school the other day and we're probably in the most nuttily beautiful place so far; own beach, hot tub, pool, golf hole, bla bla bla...we just need a huge gang of our friends and family to come and enjoy it with us...and of course I know you would if it was in Dorset...and not Waiheke on the other side of the worldie!

Hot tub with a knock-out view of the Coromandel Peninsula

Snapper caught in the rowing boat of the beach

Playing in the gun emplacements at Stony Batter. These were huge and made just in case WWII came to Waiheke.

An old motar as a hat

Raz, rowing himself back after his last fish of the week.

Raglan Sunset and Surf

 

Raglan is supposed to be one, if not the, best left hand point break in the world. However, as is usually the case when you chase surf, it wasn't really doing it's thang during our time there, but Digs and Raz had a nice morning catching some waves - with loads of other people - on the beach break.


We found a great coffee shop called Raglan Roast, where they roast their own beans and serve it in odd cups and mugs that have been warming on top of coffee machine. The Waikato region is full of farmsteds with red oxide tin roofs, and possum road kill a plenty with big hawks hovering it up.

We haven't been on a west coast for ages. Enjoy the sunset.

My fav.

Heading down to Shipwreck Bay

Houhora Big Game Fishing Club

After the top of NZ, we headed back down Ninety Mile beach, stopping off at the big game fishing club in Houhora to gawp at the massive Marlin and Tuna. Over the weekend at Shipwreck Bay we got to know the two European America’s cup teams, as they pulled up along side us with their families for one of their weekends off.

The walk around the rocks has road signs for cars that and plenty of crab as road kill. I found a huge metallic-blue Abalone shell on the beach; "Paua’s” they call them here and they grow to the size of dinner plates.

Houhora

Shipwreck Bay

Bear at Shipwreck Bay

Shipwreck Bay