North Island Bucket List Road Trip: Cape Egmont Half Marathon Campervan Adventure - Britz

Fourteen nights and 1,250 kilometres in a loop from Auckland in a campervan, built around the Cape Egmont Half Marathon on the Taranaki coast.

Waitomo comes first, where the glow worms on the roof of the main grotto read as a night sky, then Taupo on its caldera lake, with the Huka Falls nearby forcing the whole of the Waikato through a narrow channel at several hundred thousand litres a second.

Tongariro National Park follows, where Ruapehu, Ngauruhoe and Tongariro stand together and the Alpine Crossing runs between them. New Plymouth comes next, with Mount Taranaki standing over it, a near-perfect volcanic cone that gets compared to Fuji, and Egmont National Park on its slopes, where the bush changes with altitude from rimu forest to goblin forest hung with moss. The race itself is run on the coast road near the Cape Egmont lighthouse, with the mountain on one side and the Tasman on the other. The Coromandel closes the loop on the way 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. Fifteen days allows for the race and a long holiday either side of it. Surf Highway 45 round the base of the mountain is the best driving on the route and carries almost no traffic. Taranaki makes its own weather and the mountain is as often hidden as visible, so more than one night nearby is worth having. Accommodation in New Plymouth is limited on event weekends, which is where a camper pays for itself.