Preparing for a trip to NZ is taking time, but now flights and camper van are booked, and routes planned. We leave next Saturday, and Max who’s already in AU, will hopefully join us en route. The plan is for a three week, 1000 mile exploration of what looks like a geographer’s dream.

This is my favourite part of a trip: the gathering of kit, the anticipation and preparation. As a child I loved the spaghetti westerns and from “The good, the bad, and the ugly”, remember Tuco in the gunshop. His expertise and Zen-like focus redolent of the martial arts, particularly Kyudo.

No point in bringing a knife to a gunfight

Today sees lunch with an old mucker, recently returned from watching England beat NZ in a close ODI & 20:20 series (no small thanks to Stoke’s all round performance), and afterwards preparation of camera kit begins in earnest. It would be great to make a road movie.

A film by the NZ tourist board says the country’s 15000 square kilometres bigger than the UK, with a population half that of London – around 4.7million (plus a few Orcs).  Another factoid was how a region in the Southern alps, roughly the size of Conneticut is home to just 19 folk; not that I’ve any idea how big Conneticut is.

It suggests epic, panoramic shots, but maybe that’s not where our meaning’s to be found. We’ve a camper van, not a helicopter and trying to shoot something like John Ford’s panoramic vistas of Monument Valley, takes a big screen, big camera and epic ambition.

Armed with just a wannabe GoPro camera and camcorder, we’ll be looking at a more modest scale: more close-up and personal.