Bellarine Peninsula - Britz

Four nights and 210 kilometres in a loop from Melbourne in a campervan, round the Bellarine Peninsula, which is the shortest distance of anything in the Britz range.

Geelong comes first, where the Bollard Walk runs along the waterfront: more than a hundred reclaimed pier bollards carved and painted into figures from the town’s history, which is a better piece of public art than it sounds.

Queenscliffe follows at the mouth of Port Phillip Bay, a Victorian seaside town with two lighthouses and a fort built in the 1880s against a Russian invasion that never came. Point Lonsdale sits next door with its pier and the Rip beyond it, the entrance to the bay and one of the more dangerous stretches of water on the Australian coast. Barwon Heads closes the loop on the ocean side, and the Bellarine Taste Trail links the local wineries, breweries, mussel growers and berry farms along the way.

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. Five days for two hundred kilometres means the camper is barely used for driving, which makes this a base-and-stay trip rather than a road trip. It suits a first camper hire, a family with small children, or a long weekend stretched at both ends. Melbourne is an hour away, so the first and last days are easy ones.