So this is Middle-Earth...

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Having passed the morning watching playful dolphins frolicking in Le Bons Bay, we spend a couple of hours in Akaroa, the largest town on the Banks Peninsula and located at the end of a deep inlet that extends all the way to the centre of the peninsula. Akaroa is a gentrified kind of place, all cafés and estate agents - not too different from your average West London high street then, except for the stunning location. After the rugged and rather more isolated beauty of Le Bons Bay, we don't hang around too long as there's a long drive ahead.

After a quick lunch by the water back in Barry's Bay, we wave goodbye to the wondrous and glorious Half Moon Cottage, entertaining fanciful thoughts of one day running a hostel in this beautiful part of the world. Or perhaps not so fanciful...We are now heading for a dramatic change of scenery: driving inland from the Banks Peninsula, we cross the flat and uneventful Canterbury Plains. On a very clear day our destination might well be visible on the horizon, but not today. We are heading far inland, deep into the mountains: the Southern Alps, the towering and rocky spine of South island, which extend over nearly the entire length of the island.

The majority of the drive falls upon Alex, as for some inexplicable reason - we've slept like babies for weeks - I can barely keep my eyes open. For the next few hours from the comfort of the passenger seat I am vaguely aware of the road twisting and turning, and can hear the chugging of the engine as Alex is continually forced to downshift our poor little Hyundai's gears to climb up the road. This is State Highway 73, one of the tiny handful of roads which manage to connect South Island's east and west coasts despite the huge mountain ranges that separate them.

We make a short stop at Castle Hill, a sort of plateau area seven hundred metres up, well beyond the first foothills of the Alps and hence surrounded on all sides by mountains. Under grey skies, the alpine scenery is perhaps not quite as spectacular as I had hoped. Nevertheless, the area is dominated by an impressive collection of huge stone outcroppings and boulders which resemble the dilapidated ruins of a castle - hence the name of the place. We park the car by the side of the road and pass through a gate into the conservation area. The huge rock formations and boulders the size of houses are reminiscent of something...Our driving map of New Zealand, purchased in Auckland the day we arrived there, has a helpful little camera symbol to indicate places used as film locations, with the title and scene of the film written underneath in tiny lettering. There appears to be no symbol around Castle Hill on the page, but we're convinced this place starred in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Remember that bit where the Fellowship have to hide from a huge flock of black crows? Definitely could be here...As we walk around the boulders we see, bizarrely, large numbers of people carrying what look like rolled-up mattresses on their backs. We remained puzzled for a while until we realise the place is swarming with boulderers, who roll out their mats (not mattresses then) on the grass beneath particularly tempting boulders before hauling themselves up them with their bare hands: it looks like fun but far too much hard work to me. We spend a little while clambering about, pretending to be Frodo and Sam hiding from Saruman's spies. Even in the less-than-perfect weather it's immediately, blindingly obvious why New Zealand was chosen as the location for the trilogy.

Past Castle Hill, the road twists and turns for thirty of forty more kilometres as the mountains rise and rise around us - for much of the way we follow a broad river valley. We arrive in Arthur's Pass, one of the few passable routes through the mountains, under a persistent, cold drizzle that somewhat saps our spirits. Before long the drizzle turns to rain. Still, we are consoled by our accommodation in Arthur's Pass, a cute little chalet off the highway: it's part of a hostel and has three or fours bedrooms together with, like in most hostels, a shared living-room and bathroom and kitchen facilities. We are the first to arrive for the evening and unload our shopping bags full of food for the next few days, picked up in Christchurch the day before yesterday, into the fridge. Courtesy of the Warehouse, New Zealand's answer to B&Q ("The Warehouse - Where Everyone Gets a Bargain" - the radio jingle is an Ohrwurm which will remain ingrained in my memory for ever), we've also equipped ourselves with an insulated cool bag and some ice packs to keep meat and cheese goodies fresh while we move between hostels. Astute long-term readers will remember that Australians call "cool bags" "eskies" - presumably from Eskimo. Both terms, however, draw quizzical looks here in New Zealand, where they are called - quite adorably - "chilly bins". Except, as many will know from the old "fush and chups" Kiwi-accent-cliché, it usually comes out as "chully bun", which is what we will call cool bags, from now on and for ever more.

As evening approaches, it gets quite cold and we use the chalet's handy wood-burning stove to get a fire going and make the living room nice and toasty. It might be summer here (supposedly) but we are not far off three thousand feet up and it's decidedly chilly. After a bit of jostling with a group of Israeli backpackers for some kitchen space, we cook up a nice dinner and eat by the fire. Very cosy. I've really got used to this self-catering lark since we arrived in Australia all those weeks ago - if anything, it's a hell of a lot cheaper than eating out! Later, we sit by the dying fire planning the morrow's activities before withdrawing to bed...

It's the middle of the night and Alex shoots bolt upright in the bed. "Shhh! Can you hear that noise?" Words I really, really don't want to hear at, what, two in the morning? Rustle, rustle. It's definitely something and it's definitely in the room. Backpacking in New Zealand - Lesson One: never leave bread in an unsealed container. As I switch on the torch and peer into the shopping bags we cart around everywhere like a mobile larder, there is indeed a rather cute little mousie inside the paper bread-bag, frozen in the beam of the torch like a rabbit caught in the headlights of a car - caught red-pawed in our lovely granary loaf. A poke of the bag and it's gone. I tie the plastic bags up securely and hang them in the wardrobe before collapsing into bed again. No sooner have I just about drifted off that Alex wakes me up again, dispensing with all formalities this time and simply turning on the lights. The mouse has somehow made it from the food bags into one of our backpacks, which doesn't contain anything remotely edible, unless you count lip balm as edible. A nudge of the bag and it's gone. I hope there isn't mouse-poo in my breakfast in the morning.

Linseeds look rather like mouse-poo, unfortunately, so our breakfast the following morning is quite likely enriched with a little extra roughage. Won't do us any harm. The plan for today is to baptise our newly-acquired A Tramper's Guide to New Zealand's National Parks and to go for our first proper walk, a nice bracing tramp - the charming Kiwi word for hillwalking - nearby. The Bealey Spur track branches off the main road along the ridge of the same name, following the deep valley of the Waimakariri River. The five-hour walk is nothing short of sensational, taking us through forest with trees shrouded in ghostly pale green lichen, open patches of coarse, tussocky grass with crystal-clear tarns, along the tops of vertigo-inducing cliffs towering over the rushing river. We stop at Bealey Spur Hut, a Department of Conservation-maintained shack with a few bunks. There are hundreds of these "backcountry huts" all over New Zealand. As we take a breather in the clearing where the huts sits, a young couple come sauntering up the hill with their camping gear to spend the night at the hut - with a baby in tow! We're not out of shape after Australia and the WWOOFing, but good grief... From the clearing, we have an astounding panoramic view of the huge Otira River valley, along which the highway and railway snake, nothing but threads from up here. The sky is blue, the wind is ringing in our ears - this is Middle Earth and there's no doubt about it. The Otira River runs through a flat and wide stony bed - it is a braided river, made up of many small channels than snake together, meeting and separating again like ropes twisted together. South Island is one of only a handful of places in the world where braided rivers are common. Look at the photographs - they're unmistakeable.

Exhilarated by the beautiful walk and breathtaking views, we make our way back to the car, parked in the tiny settlement of Bealey Spur off State Highway 73. Back to the chalet for a hearty supper and some curling up by the fire with back issues of National Geographic. Bliss.

The following morning, as we check out at the hostel's main building, Alex casually mentions the mouse. Apparently this summer is a "mast year", a year when the production of fruit and nuts by trees happens to be synchronised, leading to an explosion in the population of mice and other small beasties. The hostel staff have apparently put traps and poisoned bait (invasions by non-native species are a bit of a leitmotiv in New Zealand's recent history) everywhere, so I suppose we should count ourselves lucky to have had one furry visitor and not fifty. Now that would have been funny.

Before we leave Arthur's Pass we take another walk not far off the road to see the Bridal Veil Falls, which takes us through beautiful beech forest, damp and green and cool after the night's rain. Beautiful. As we make our way back to the car, parked on the highway, we see our first kea - New Zealand's famous alpine parrot - waddling along the street. Outgoing keas are famous for their cheeky and destructive behaviour, which is mostly - and very specifically - centred on the rubbery stuff around car windscreens and windows. They are unique to the mountains of South Island and their comical appearance is popular with visitors, although perhaps less so with locals - keas are said to be particularly fond of the dense fat around sheep's kidneys, and will land on the back of a healthy sheep and tear its back to shreds to get at it. Yuck.

We take highway 73 back the way we came, peeling off westwards at Darfield onto route 77. We've got into the habit of booking a few nights' accommodation in advance - our next bed is in the small skiing town of Methven, although obviously there's not much by the way of winter sports at the height of summer in January...Halfway to Methven we stop at a bridge where the highway crosses the Rakaia River. The Rakaia Gorge north of the highway is apparently a choice spot for another good tramp, so we get our walking boots on and step out. The track is hard going at times, steep and muddy, but rises away from the road to follow the river as it digs a deep gorge through the landscape. Every tramp in New Zealand is a potential lesson in geography - the Rakaia is not braided around here, but what is special, very special, about it is its hue. The river is a brilliant, opaque and milky blue - a cloudy topaz. The river gets its colour as the water is a suspension of "glacial flour", extremely fine particles of rock ground by the action of glaciers much further upstream into the mountains. The colour is so unusual and striking as to look almost artificial! Now and then, as we walk along the edge of the gorge, we hear the drone of jetboats whisking visitors up the river to admire the gorge from below. The lookout at the end of track is again spectacular, located on a tight bend in the river - blue all around. On the way back a grassy knoll covered in wildflowers makes the perfect picnic spot. Thank goodness for that steroid-shot-in-the-bum in Opotiki...On the drive to Methven we take a short detour to follow an "organic veggies" sign (ten a penny here in New Zealand) and meet a nice man who digs up potatoes and radishes straight from the ground of his back garden for our supper. Tesco, eat your manky, ugly, over-packaged, monopolising, profiteering heart out.

The delightfully named Alpenhorn Chalet is ours and ours alone for the evening. A lovely, cosy place to spend the night - Kiwi hostels really are the bee's femoro-tibial joints. We feast on steak and potatoes, fuel for tramping, and a glass of Kiwi vino. Yum.

The next day is one of walkies, again. Our endurance is increasing rapidly, and we stop pretty much everywhere we can to have a good old tramp. On the menu for the day is the Pudding Hill Scenic Reserve, a beautiful and densely wooded hillside resonating with the sound of birdsong, the track deserted and offering great view of the Canterbury Plains to the south. Further along the road towards Geraldine - next bed - is the Peel Forest, an exceptionally rare patch of untouched, endemic podocarp forest that, somehow, managed to escape the axes of New Zealand's logging days many decades ago. The area is crisscrossed by rough tracks leading to waterfalls hidden deep in the forest - much boulder-hopping, to our delight, is required to follow these tracks and they wind their way through the tall, tall trees and myriad species of fern. The botany of the area is beyond me I'm afraid, but the names of the trees are beautiful nonetheless and roll off the tongue - totara, kahikatea, matai...Altogether more romantic than Dacrycarpus dacrydoides and Prumnopitys taxifolia wouldn't you say? Rata Falls and Emily Falls, fast-flowing, cool and remote, are the reward at the end of the walk.

Geraldine is not much to write home about, a small place, but equipped - it's New Zealand remember - with a great and bizarrely international hostel, a converted maternity hospital run by a married Dutch couple who bake pizzas in their own stone oven for guests to feast on for dinner. Molto bene!...or should that be zeer goed? Or perhaps even the Kiwi version. Sweet as.

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