Last Sunday (mothers day) we embarked on the Tongariro Alpine Crossing. New Zealand has many "great walks" - multiday paths with some pricey but welcome huts dotted along the way. The Crossing is the second day's section of one of these walks and according to most of the people that we know have done it, it's among the best. The track crosses through a volcanically active area near the centre of North Island.

The walk was stunning, even though the weather closed in on us a bit towards the end. I could have carried on staring at the sandy plains bedecked with lava flows and turquoise blue pools cupped in ruby red craters for days.

The best bit of all though was climbing Mount Ngauruhoe, better known as Mt Doom from Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings (New Zealand's best ever tourist video). It's an optional side-track from the main walk, a third of the way in.

Now the path up Mt Doom doesn't really exist, you take your chances along with the people before you on scratchy gravel and old lava flows. It's a 600 m vertical climb on a 45 degree slope and unless you use the lava flows then it's basically a walk up an enormous scratchy sand dune. When we finally hauled ourselves to the top, we found we were on a crater rim surrounded by a sea of clouds stretching off into the distance below us. After some sandwiches, I decided to throw an old ring of mine into the crater. I know. It was very cheesy. But I just couldn't help myself!

The wind shifted and the clouds started moving in so we decided it was time to set off back down - Si and I were both looking forward to scree-running down the scratchy gravel that we'd previously laboured up. But as we approached the beginning of the good run a load of good-sized rocks came bouncing out of the clouds down towards us, forcing Si to duck for cover at one point. At first I suspected a guy who had been huffing and puffing his way down slowly behind me, but he was now to my left and the rocks were coming from straight up. At that point I thought "that's not him, that's the mountain". Terrified, I waited knowing that if it was an earthquake then all the scratchy gravel was going to slide down the mountain taking us with it. Luckily the rocks passed by and the shaking never happened. Needless to say we got out of the way of any more rocks and after a few nervous laughs we set off on our way back down again with Si, - team scree-jumping champion - out in front.

The next day (Monday) we went on a short mountain bike jaunt through beautiful countryside on the Fisher track. It was also pretty exciting as we spent a lot of the track cycling through muddy potholes just a meter or two away from a fairly hefty cliff edge. Still - awesome fun!