Auckland to Waitomo - Britz

Six nights in a loop out of Auckland in a campervan, taking in the Coromandel, the volcanic plateau and Hobbiton.

Te Kauwhata and Thames come first, then Coromandel Town, Whitianga and Hahei, with Cathedral Cove, a limestone arch on a beach reached by water taxi or on foot. Waihi follows, a gold town with a working open pit in the middle of it that can be looked into from the street.

Lake Okaro and Tongariro National Park come next, where Ruapehu, Ngauruhoe and Tongariro stand together and the slopes of Ngauruhoe served as Mount Doom. Taupo follows on its caldera lake with the Huka Falls, where the Waikato is forced through a narrow channel at several hundred thousand litres a second, then Hobbiton at Matamata, the film set preserved on a working sheep farm, before the run back north.

Britz supply the camper and the day-by-day plan, and the hire is priced live per vehicle rather than per person; campsites, fuel, ferries, park fees and activities are all extra, with a nil-excess insurance pack available at booking. Seven days for a loop of this size is a comfortable pace with no long legs in it. Hobbiton runs guided tours only and sells out in summer, and Cathedral Cove access has been affected by storm damage in recent years. The Coromandel and the central plateau are quite different in character, which is what makes the loop worth driving rather than basing in one place. Waihi is the stop nobody expects to enjoy and most do, since the viewing platform looks straight down into a working mine.