While we were at Clive, the guy who distilled his own spirits recommended visiting Lake Waikaremoana. Katy had looked at this before but it had seemed a bit of a detour. However, fortified by the strength of his personal recommendation - and some of his liquor - we decided to give it a go.

The route took us about 50km inland and much of the latter section was over a gravel road, most of which wasn't marked on our map. Blanche, however, rose to the challenge and coped admirably with the rough surface.

The campsite and the location both lived up to their billing. The former was right on the edge of the lake and seemed to be populated mainly by 'boaties', as Kiwis call those who love messing about in floating craft. There must have been about 20 boats parked around the camp as well as a further 15 or so actually in the water.

The lake is surrounded by steep hills covered in rain forest and with the weather being brilliantly sunny for the season, we received picture-postcard views in various shades of blue and green. Our initial position in the camp was obscured by another vehicle, but after that departed we moved to a spot within a few feet of the lakeside. On waking up in the morning, we were treated to an uninterrupted vista across the shining water, punctuated only by small boats carrying fishermen towards their catch or hill walkers to their drop-off points.

The lake is part of the Te Uruwera National Park, the third largest in the country, and is number 41 on the list of 101 Must-Do's for Kiwis. The walk around the lake is one of New Zealand's's 10 Great Walks and takes four days even for experienced trampers.

The lake is apparently only a couple of thousand years old. It was formed after a massive landslide created piles of debris 300 metres thick. Subsequent rainfall could no longer find a way out of the newly-made natural basin and Waikaremoana was the result.

Our first day's activity consisted of a walk to see some nearby waterfalls. The surroundings were very pleasant and the falls themselves were probably the nicest we have seen in New Zealand. It's probably a good job, however, that we haven't been to Niagara yet!

While cooking that evening we talked to a family who remembered us from when we had stayed at the same camp in Fox Glacier in January. We hadn't spoken to each other then, but they remembered us and Blanche, and we recalled how the two children spent hours and hours on the trampoline. The parents told us how all four of them would go on multi-day tramps, with the four-year-old boy walking about 10-12km a day while his younger sister would be carried.

Perhaps his strength comes from his diet because the whole family was eating rump steak, cooked medium rare. The little girl was even heard to ask for "more meat daddy", which she then wolfed down. She will presumably be doing the Waikaremoana Great Walk next year, once she gets out of nappies.

On our second day proper, we walked along the lakeside as far as we could until the water came too close to the rocks. There was no one else around and the only people we saw were driving their boats across to the other side of the lake. We sat and ate our lunch sat on some boulders and I taught Katy to play cribbage because rummy has become boring. She won the first game narrowly, but I hammered her in the second. The struggle for supremacy will continue.

We left the camp on Saturday morning and headed off to the Onepoto caves, which were formed during the same geological upheaval as the lake and were advertised as being "up to 50 metres in length". We had visions of dark-mouthed entrances, leading to fabulous caverns within, but these caves were not of the 'Aladdin' variety at all. Rather, the path wound around a series of cracks and holes, tucked away among great slabs of sandstone which stood at odd angles as a result of the landslide. Some of them obviously disappeared a greater distance underground, but most were fairly shallow. Katy found them quite interesting because they were different to the water-formed caves she had seen before.

After that, we headed off towards Gisborne, well satisfied with our detour. Lake Waikaremoana is well off the beaten tourist track, but somewhere that is worth a visit - whether it's to walk, to fish or just sit back and do nothing much at all.

Richard