Top of the South Island - Britz

Ten nights and 1,000 kilometres in a loop from Christchurch in a campervan, built around two of New Zealand’s Great Walks.

Hanmer Springs comes first with its thermal pools, then Marahau, the gateway to Abel Tasman National Park, where the coast track runs sixty kilometres between granite headlands and golden beaches and can be walked in sections with water taxis filling the gaps.

Nelson follows, then Picton and the Queen Charlotte Track, which starts at Ship Cove, where Cook anchored five times in the 1770s, and runs seventy kilometres along the ridges and bays of the Marlborough Sounds, with boats carrying packs between the lodges. Blenheim and Renwick come next in the middle of the country’s largest wine region, then Kaikoura, where swimming with fur seals is offered and the whale watching goes out over a deep canyon close to shore.

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. Eleven days with two long-distance tracks in it means the walking is the trip and the driving is the connection between the two. Water taxis, track transport and lodge beds all need booking well ahead in summer. A camper suits this unusually well, since both tracks start and finish where a vehicle can be left safely. Neither walk needs to be done in full: both are regularly taken as day sections, which is what this itinerary assumes.