For mountain bikers, you can’t visit New Zealand and miss out on Rotorua and Queenstown: these two towns in NZ have already become sacrosanct pilgrimage sites for the devotees of dirt riding.
For fantasy geeks meanwhile, you can’t visit New Zealand and miss out on Hobbiton. That’s like going to Banaue and not visiting the terraces, or getting a Triumph Street Scrambler and riding it only to the nearest 7-Eleven, or getting a Santa Cruz Hightower and biking solely around the UP campus. You get the drift.
That’s why, as excited as I was to hop on the saddle and start grinding gears on the trail to Rivendell, I had to make time to visit the Shire and see for myself where Bilbo and Gandalf enjoyed second breakfast and pipeweed. Read more [+]