A Hop To Hobbit Hole

On a journey to visit “The Shire” in New Zealand, this writer drove two BMWs and formed a fellowship with three journos, the shortest of whom turned out to be a Singaporean hobbit.

- Sarjeet Singh

HOBBITS are small humanlike characters in J.R.R. Tolkien’s novels The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

The have hairy legs, are about half as tall as the average human, and have little to no magic in them.

If hobbits were real, they would reside in Matamata, which is about two hours’ drive from Auckland, New Zealand. You see, Matamata is home to Hobbiton, the movie set for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

The aim of this adventure was to visit Hobbiton. Our fellowship consisted of four journalists who were paired up to drive two BMWs – the X2 and the 6 Series Gran Turismo (GT).

I hopped into the X2 with my co-driver, the vertically challenged editor of Sgcarmart, for the start of our drive from the Heritage Hotel in Auckland.

The X2 is a handsome hatchback with raised suspension. Because it isn’t as tall as an SUV, it should handle better and have less body roll.

Our test unit was the sDrive20i variant with 192hp and 280Nm, enough to propel it to 100km/h in 7.7 seconds. Okay, perhaps it’s a nanosecond slower with my muscular (the wife calls it fat) 78kg physique at the helm and my buddy’s 50-something kilogram mass (or lack of) in the passenger seat.

Our first stop after an hour of driving was Kawakawa Bay, which has an amazing shore made of shellfish shells. A sign told us that each person could only gather fifty cockles daily.

As I divided the one gazillion shells on the shore by 50 to find out how many humans had consumed cockles there, my iPhone hung.

We stopped further down the coastal road at Whakatiwai for more photo opportunities. I took a few shots of the landscape behind the Firth of Thames because it reminded me of the Windows XP default wallpaper.