Hobbiton, New Zealand

Us in Bilbo Baggin's shack

See our Hobbiton pictures.

The Lord of the Rings score boomed through our bus stereo as we headed to Hobbiton. Brochures featuring authentic replicas of swords, armour and the One Ring (now mass-produced in a variety of styles to suit all occasions) from the films was passed round the bus. We'd booked a tour to the set Peter Jackson used as the location for the Hobbit's village in The Fellowship of the Ring. Neither Amy or I are big LOTR devotees, but we knew it would make her dad, Malcolm, damn jealous.

There are loads of LOTR tours now in New Zealand but this is the only one where sets are still standing. On all the others you just have to trust the guides when they say, "See that mountain up there? That's Mount Doom, that is."

We were surprised at how good the tour was. There was only one diehard LOTR fan who must have taken 300 pictures (admittedly, we probably took 100), but sadly no one came dressed as Gandalf. I thought about it, but I didn't have space in my weekly budget to shell out for a cloak and white beard.

The site was huge. The crew had gone to great effort to remove every trace of New Zealand - dressing up native trees with extra branches and leaves to make them look like English oak. We posed for photos in front of tens of Hobbit houses that upon review, all look pretty much the same. We also hugged The Party Tree. And stepped in lots of sheep poo.

After the tour we fed some sheep that the farmer keeps as pets. These lucky lambs live a life of luxury and will never end up in the supermarket. Two dippy girls accompanied us on the tour and realising that the pet sheep had names, asked whether the other 1,200 sheep the farmer owns have names too. They're probably referred to as 'meat,' I thought.

Amy was bitten on her EYELID by a mosquito the other day (ouch!). Noticing her bulging eyelid, our Hobbiton guide offered some advice on bringing down the swelling. Apparently it's an old Maori remedy to rub a gold ring (the One Ring, perhaps?) on swollen eyes to cool them. Hokum maybe, but it was a much more pleasant solution than the other Maori advice offered by a passing woman the other day. "Rub urine into your eye," she said. Though I offered to help out however I could, Amy's sticking to antibiotics.

I'm really enjoying New Zealand. The place is beautiful - it's all hills and livestock. Yesterday Amy and I went to Hell's Gate - a geothermic national park with a spa tacked to the side of it. We wandered around bubbling mud pools and breathed in the sulphuric waters (which blow-out eggy steam) and later went for a mud bath and spa - both heated by steam piped from the Earth's crust. It was beyond relaxing - we felt utterly knackered for the rest of the day and I had to have a nap in the afternoon. I was thinking of having a beer at lunchtime too, but that would have probably finished me off and forced me into a coma.

We leave Rotorua today and start making our way towards Wellington and then the South island. We've got a seven-hour hike through Tongariro National Park to look forward to before we reach our destination on Sunday.