14 day South Island Roadtrip with kids - Britz

Thirteen nights and 2,169 kilometres in a loop from Christchurch in a campervan, anticlockwise round the South Island and pitched at families.

Dunedin comes first down the coast, with the Moeraki Boulders on the beach on the way and a little blue penguin colony at Oamaru, then Invercargill at the southern end of the island, where Burt Munro’s record-breaking Indian is displayed in a hardware shop on the main street, among the lawnmowers.

Te Anau, Queenstown, Arrowtown and Wanaka follow through Fiordland and Central Otago, then Franz Josef on the West Coast, where a glacier comes down through rainforest almost to sea level. Greymouth and Westport carry the route north, with Punakaiki between them, where the Pancake Rocks are limestone weathered into stacked plates with blowholes beneath them that perform at high tide. Nelson, Blenheim and Kaikoura close the loop down the east coast, with the seals at Point Kean the last stop before Christchurch.

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. Fourteen days for 2,169 kilometres is a fair pace with children aboard, though the legs on the West Coast are the long ones. The loop format avoids a one-way relocation fee. Queenstown, Wanaka and Kaikoura are the stops worth two nights, since each has enough for a day off the road. A camper solves most of the problems of travelling with children in the South Island, where the distances between towns are long and the next meal is not always where it is wanted.