5th March Mount Doom, Mount Ruapehu and Gollum’s pool

 Another early start. We left Taupo at 8 and travelled up into the Tongariro National Park, where quite a bit of both LotR and Hobbit filming took place. We saw Mount Doom, Mount Ruapehu (slopes of Mordor and Emyn Muil and secret entrance to Erebor. Because the weather was so fine and clear (total rarity) we were able to see the Lonely Mountain in the distance - awesome!

Then we travelled on to the Mangawhero Falls, location of the sequence where Gollum goes fishing in a cold stream, and there was a chance for more cosplaying. I was one of the Sams.

After that, it was a long drive to the bottom of North Island. We arrived in Wellington around 6 pm, and will be staying here till Sunday morning. We visit the Weta Workshop tomorrow!!

4th March: Trollshaw Forest

 An early start - we left Rotorua at 8 am and travelled by coach for hours towards Piopio, the location of Trollshaw Forest (important location in the first The Hobbit movie. The tour was both informative and entertaining and the sun shone on us again - which I am  absolutely *not* taking for granted - the weather here is as unpredictable as Wales or Austria.

At the (inevitable) shop attached to the place, I spotted a rather beautiful letter opener in the form of Sting, so I treated myself.

Although the countryside of the North Island is very beautiful, it is very under-inhabited - isolated farms and widely-scattered little townships. I couldn’t help wondering how the farmers and their families access services like schools, doctors, hospitals, libraries… or even people like plumbers and electricians! I guess they have to be pretty self-reliant.

By the end of the day, having spent (far too) much of it on the coach [yeah, I know, what did I expect of a touring holiday] I am feeling a little like Sam Vimes in one of the Discworld books, complaining of MMBU (miles and miles of bloody Uberwald).

We eventually reached Taupo around 4:30, and I’m in another very posh room in the Taupo Lakeside Hilton. The bathroom has to be seen to be believed! It even has a balcony, so I can cape without having to go downstairs all the time. The lake is beautiful and is the largest inland lake in Australasia.

Emyn Muil and Mount Doom tomorrow.

3rd March Hobbiton in the Shire

 Today was beyond special (apart from the hours of coach travel, which were tedious). The countryside is beautiful  - reminded me a lot of our bit of Wales. We stopped off at a little place called Tinau for lunch, and Hannah’s gluten-free app found a lovely cafe called Enchanted Places, which seemed appropriate…

We dropped our cases at the very posh Novotel in Rotorua (my room is enormous and palatial) then backtracked to Matamata.

We arrived at Hobbiton mid-afternoon, and I burst into tears on the spot when Julie started playing the Fellowship theme in the coach. Oh my! Actually being in Hobbiton was beyond amazing - I was walking around with my hand on my heart and a huge grin on my face. It was a gorgeously sunny afternoon, as you’ve seen from the photos, which showed it at its best. Julie, the tour leader was wonderful at offering to record special moments on our phones - I have a video of running in Bilbo’s footsteps “I’m going on an adventure!”, picking up post from the Bag End mail box, and smoking Bilbo’s pipe (consciously channelling my father). Every hobbit hole was different and the level of detail was (as you might expect) superb.

One highlight for me was visiting on of two hobbit holes on Bagshot Row, which they’ve completely kitted out inside (which opened at the end of 2024). We were able to spend 15 minutes wandering from room to room, capturing all the wonderful details. Which is why there are so many photos. I’m so glad that Maz / Dad has offered to help me make a photo book when I get home, and that I’ll have these blogposts to remind me of the details. 

Then we had dinner in a pavilion behind The Green Dragon, followed by a lantern lit procession (shades of Hucklow, Becky and Arran) up to Bag End and the Party Field, before piling back into the coach and heading back to Rotorua, 

Honestly, it could not have been more wonderful!

2nd March: The Adventure Begins!

I slept really well (not surprisingly) after all the travelling. Then had a quiet and peaceful recovery day, reading The Two Towers and doing a bit of crochet. The buffet breakfast was delicious GF cereal and brownies, plus a selection of fresh fruit - I chose pear, apricot, pineapple, grapes, and (of course) kiwi fruit.

My ankles were still a bit swollen, so I decided to go for a walk. The hotel is in the middle of an industrial park which makes Brackmills look like a corner shop, but there were lots of trees to enjoy. And I felt Much Better afterwards.

We all (about 30 of us) had a welcome meal at 5:30 in a side room of the hotel. I bought some little bits & pieces, and collected my pre-ordered NZ greenstone heart, which is beautiful … and met some lovely people, including two American couples and a Sikh from Hounslow. Hannah and Sean (from Philadelphia) are good friends with a UU minister back home. And Hannah is also doing the bungee jump!

RCT  have given us each a full-colour brochure, which will be a nice souvenir. Off to Hobbiton tomorrow!

27th February - 1st March: I’m Going On An Adventure,

My adventure began after Maz very kindly dropped me off at Heathrow Airport on Friday evening. As usual, we had factored too much time in for delays, so I had a long wait. So I divided my time between reading The Fellowship of the Ring, and people-watching, which at Heathrow always reminds me of Love Actually.

Plane no.1, from London to Singapore, took off on time. I have never been on such an enormous plane - (an Airbus 380) ten seats wide with an upper deck too!

I was really lucky on this first leg - I was sharing a four-seat row with one other person, so there was room to spread out. Never having been on a long haul flight like this, I was fascinated to discover that a small pillow and a blanket are supplied for overnight flights - very civilised. Nor that at a certain point, the entire plane goes into sleep mode - as though the cabin crew were our parents, declaring “lights out”. I slept longer and better than I expected - and I now understand why David and Sarah and Becky and Arran use white noise to soothe the kids to sleep … the rumble of the plane’s engines did the same. And I was able to lie across two seats for part of the night.

After a 13 hour flight, which included two tasty and imaginative GF meals (!), I disembarked at Changi Airport. Which I was not impressed with - yes, it was clean and spacious and had a fabulous coffee shop which Maz would have loved, but I would have traded all that for significantly better signposting and even a shred of understanding of “gluten free” in the food outlets.

I found the Butterfly Garden, but assume they were all asleep. Here’s a Photo of some chrysalises for Sam.

Another long and tedious wait for flight no.2, from Changi to Auckland (10 hours this time, but it felt more like 20!) because a) the plane was full b) I was in the middle of a row of three, in spite of having asked for an aisle seat and c) we were seated below a loud and annoying air conditioner, so I got hardly any sleep.

The entrance to Auckland airport is very attractive (see photo below) but I was *not* impressed at having to queue for two hours (along with seemingly everyone else from several flights) in order to have my hiking boots inspected for cleanliness. Which is part of a new NZ government bio security drive, which I’m all in favour of, but it needs to be better organised and staffed.

The hotel room for tonight and tomorrow is huge and very nice. I had a soaky  bath as soon as I’d checked in, and feel a bit more human. The milk for the tea and coffee  ones in dinky little glass bottles….

It’s now 7:35 pm on Sunday 1st March. Not sure when you’ll get this, but I love you all heaps. The interesting blogposts will start tomorrow evening. Xxxx

Looking in the Mirror

The second of Frederick Buechner's Lenten questions is a bit of an odd one: "When you look at your face in the mirror, what do you see in it that you most like, and what do you see in it that you most deplore?"

I guess the answer to the first question is smiley eyes. The answer to the second is, I suppose, my somewhat irregular nose (the product of years of thumb-sucking as a child). But to be honest, I don't spend very much time either looking in the mirror or worrying about what other people think when they look at me. I am too old and (blessedly) at peace with myself to bother. Apart from a regular skin care regime, what you see is what you get.

If I had been answering this question twenty years ago, I would have been obsessing about minor imperfections. These days, not so much. I am well aware that I am a little overweight, and that I could do with getting more exercise (and eating less chocolate) but I cannot bring myself to care that much. So long as my body does what I ask of her, and is not in pain, all is well. I am so thankful that she is healthy.

I am me - a "unique, precious, child of God" to quote the Quakers, wife of 42+ years in a strong and happy marriage, mother of two wonderful grown-up children, and Nannie to three gorgeous boys. I am also a Unitarian minister and a published author, a crocheter and a stitcher. Yesterday was my 66th birthday. I retired from employment as District Minister of the Midland Unitarian Association, and the future stretches out in front of me.  In comparison to all that glory and good fortune, what do my looks matter?

Is there a God?

The subject for my online service on 15th February was Lent as A Spiritual Journey. One of the readings I chose was by the Christian theologian, Frederick Buechner. In it, he asked a series of  questions, which I'm going to reflect on as my Lenten practice for this year. They came from his book, Whistling in the Dark: A Doubter's Dictionary, which is rather wonderful. So I'm going to attempt to answer one each week (except for the first two weeks in March, when I'm in New Zealand  and will have no computer with me).

The first question is: "If you had to bet everything you have on whether there is a God or whether there isn't, which side would get your money and why?"

The short answer to this is yes, I do believe there is a God, because I have experienced His/Her presence. But my relationship with God has evolved over the years. As a child, the primary school I attended observed the cycle of the Christian year, and held an assembly every morning, so I learned all the lovely C of E hymns. I also owned a very nice Children's Bible, so I knew many of the stories from both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament.

Did I have a relationship with God in those days? Well, I took His existence for granted, and accepted the stories I read fairly uncritically. It wasn't something I thought about much.

After running into issues with Christianity in my teens, and having discovered Unitarianism, the God I believe in was loving, and omnipotent, but strangely powerless (I know, that is a paradox). I believe with Mother Teresa that we are God's hands in the world, and that He/She can only work through us. I do trust that God exists, and believe with the Quakers that there is "that of God in everyone", and that each of us is "unique, precious, a child of God." And that therefore it is up to us to treat every human being with compassion and respect. Even those we dislike and distrust.

In 2012, my husband and I did a touring holiday in France, visiting several of the marvellous Gothic cathedrals. When we visited Chartres Cathedral, I had a close encounter with God, while walking its labyrinth. I had walked labyrinths before, mindfully, and had found it an uplifting experience. The experience I had at Chartres was of another quality altogether.

When I first entered the labyrinth, I realised that the people in front of me were moving really slowly, stopping every few paces to pray or meditate. My initial reaction was to overtake them and carry on, but my guardian angel nudged me at the right moment, and I decided to go with the flow and see what happened.

Gradually, as I walked, slowly, mindfully, my mindset changed, and I began to pray: firstly, the Metabhavna, the Buddhist prayer of loving kindness, but then, the Lord's Prayer, over and over again, in whole or in part. I offered my prayer up to the heavens, in the sure and certain knowledge that *Someone* was listening. It was the closest I had ever come to a direct experience of God, and I don't think I will ever forget it. It took me 90 minutes to reach the centre of the labyrinth and I simply wasn't conscious of the passage of time.

In the years since then, I have come to believe that God is Love, and that Love is at the centre of everything. And that God in the form of the Spirit is active and present in our lives, if we are only wide awake enough to sense it. I believe that we are all made in the divine image and that God has been waiting for the unique, divine incarnation that is each of us since the beginning of the universe, and that He/She sees each of us as perfect and whole and beautiful, exactly as we are. And that this perfect, whole, beautiful being lives inside each of us and is loved by God, and has been loved by God since we were born, and that there is nothing we can do (however good or bad) that will change that.

Today, I have an active awareness of God, the Sacred, in the natural world, in my everyday life. I have come to recognise that God is everywhere: in the world, and in me. And that is good.