New Zealand Movie sets, Maori culture and motorhoming

Tolkien fever is set to rise further with the release of the second Hobbit movie this year, and motorhoming on New Zealand’s North Island lets fans explore locations from the films and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Families will also experience the freewheeling joys of campervan life: here you’ll wake up by deserted beaches and camp out in landscapes more enthralling than any of Middle Earth.

After you have paid homage at the Hobbiton film set, with its 44 hobbit holes, explored the lush farmlands of surrounding Waikato and hiked to Wairere Falls, there are the long, sandy swimming and surfing beaches of the far north to enjoy. But the North Island has plenty more to offer. At the geothermal site of Rotorua, kids will love the spurting geysers and bubbling mud, and the eggy, sulphurous smells that emanate from them. Lake Taupo, within a volcanic caldera roughly the size of Singapore, is great for adventure activities and boat trips to see Maori rock carvings. Close by is Tongariro National Park, home to its eponymous active volcano and Mount Ruapehu, which film buffs will recognise as Mount Doom in the Lord of the Rings films. It’s another stunning outdoor playground, perfect for rafting and other thrilling pursuits.

Cape Town Where city break meets whales and wilderness

A visit to Cape Town and the Garden Route offers a combination of laid-back city break, great beaches, awesome landscapes and wildlife encounters with everything from skittish meerkats to prowling cheetahs. As a bonus, South Africa’s time zone means there’s no loss of hours and energy to jet lag.

Must-dos in Cape Town include riding the revolving cable car up Table Mountain, where you can take to mountain bikes or horseback to explore the Tokai Forest that clads its eastern slope, then refuel with a traditional braai barbecue. You can also go on a tour of a Xhosa township, or ride the ferry to Unesco-listed Robben Island to see where Nelson Mandela was detained – and visit its African penguin colony, one of the world’s largest.

There are more of these endangered birds – around 3,000 – at Simon’s Town, 45 minutes south of Cape Town; in the summer you can swim alongside them. Other critter sightings on this part of the Cape Peninsula include wild baboons, ostriches and fur seals, whose colonies can be reached by boat.

But the real adventures start further south. A jaunt along the 800km Garden Route will take you to wonderful beaches, designated nature reserves, national parks and wilderness areas with ancient forests to roam and mountain hideaways in which to hunker down. Spot southern right whales at Hermanus and humpbacks at Plettenberg Bay, where you can also see dolphins and visit orphaned elephants in their sanctuary.

Greece Watery wanderings and murderous myths

A compelling experience for the gore-loving Horrible Histories generation, this trip combines an Aegean odyssey with a crash course in ancient myths, and throws in some of Greece’s best beaches for good measure. The Peloponnese peninsula, two hours from Athens airport, is a great starting point. Here you’ll find Mycenae, the hilltop fortification whose walls were said to have been built by the giant one-eyed Cyclops, as well as the ruins of the original Olympic stadium and its fabulous museum.

It’s a seven-hour ferry ride from Gythio, in the south Peloponnese, to Kastelli on the island of Crete. Once you’re on shore, visit the ruins of the Minoan city of Knossos where, according to legend, the hero Theseus slew the Minotaur. From Crete, take another ferry (two to five hours, depending on the craft) to gorgeous Santorini and the Minoan Bronze Age site of Akrotiri. Buried by an eruption and unknown for most of its history, it’s said to have inspired Plato’s story of the lost island of Atlantis.

Santorini is about three hours by ferry from cosmopolitan Mykonos, site of a legendary battle between Zeus and the Titans. It’s now best known for its beaches, but a day trip to Delos, the sacred, uninhabited island held to be the birthplace of Artemis and Apollo, reveals fascinating temples and sanctuaries. From Mykonos it’s three to six hours back to the mainland at Piraeus, in Athens. (Research ferries at gtp.gr/map.asp).

Campania Perfect pizzas and explosive Roman history

That it’s the home of pizza should be a big enough sell to kids alone. Add in an active volcano, part-buried Roman towns, wildlife spotting, narrow-gauge railway jaunts and boat trips into an electricblue sea cave, and Naples – along with the surrounding Campania region – is a fantastic family holiday choice.

Start in Naples, hunting down the city’s best pizza and perhaps trying your hand at making one. Then explore the ancient Greek- Roman streets beneath San Lorenzo Maggiore church and discover historic treasures within the National Archaeological Museum. Lend some context to the relics by hopping aboard the Circumvesuviana railway to Pompeii and Herculaneum, Roman towns that were smothered, and preserved, in ash by the AD 79 eruption of Vesuvius. The volcano is still active – thrill kids by taking them to peer nervously into its crater, before spotting lizards, geckos and whipsnakes in the surrounding national park.

For more Roman history, this time with sweeping coastal landscapes, jump back on the Circumvesuviana to Sorrento. From here, a ferry or hydrofoil whisks you to the volcanic island of Capri, with its famed sea stacks, some of the best-preserved Roman villas in Italy, and trips into the shimmering Blue Grotto, a sea cave that glows with sapphire light filtered through underwater cavities.

Egypt From ancient wonders to marine marvels

Combining big distances with even bigger sights, and some beach fun thrown into the bargain, an Egyptian adventure is hard to beat. Take in the Sphinx and the pyramids (the largest of which is the sole surviving Wonder of the Ancient World) at Giza, then the tombs of the ancient pharaohs in the Valley of the Kings, before swimming and snorkelling in the Red Sea. This is an exciting family holiday that none of you will ever forget.

Start in surprisingly child-friendly Cairo. It’s not just a base from which to visit the ancient desert splendours of Giza – it’s also home to the famed Egyptian Museum, which houses treasures from the tomb of Tutankhamun (there’s even a Lego replica of his famous golden mask in the museum’s children’s exhibit). A ten-hour deluxe sleeper train (or one-hour flight) brings you to that boy-king’s tomb and his mummy in the Valley of the Kings, the 3,500-year-old burial ground of royal mausoleums that stretches across the Nile’s west bank. The valley is near Luxor, a city built on the site of ancient Thebes and close to the mighty temple complex of Karnak, whose construction took around 1,500 years. Pick hotels with swimming pools to let off steam after sightseeing in the heat.

A four-hour taxi or bus ride from Luxor takes you to the Red Sea resort of Hurghada, where the main attraction is boat-trips to offshore reefs for snorkelling and dolphin-spotting in the Red Sea. From here, you can fly back to Cairo or directly to the UK.

Ecuador From heritage architecture to unique wildlife

Ecuador offers both jewels of civilisation and nature red in tooth and claw. Quito, the capital, was built in the 1600s on the ruins of an Inca city. Wind among its streets and seek out masterworks of colonial architecture such as the monastery of San Francisco, or travel above it in the Pichincha Volcano cable car to see why it was the first city that Unesco named a World Heritage Site.

Cotopaxi volcano and its national park, 20km south of the city, have spectacular glaciers, snowfields and woodlands, but for an unrivalled perspective on nature, book a remote lodge in the Amazon rainforest. Here you’ll see tapirs, lizards, monkeys and parrots. On your travels you can also horse-ride and mountain-bike down volcano slopes, shoot along zip lines, go white-water rafting or bathe in hot cloud-forest springs.

Of course you can combine an Ecuador tour with a Galápagos cruise to get close to wildlife you won’t find anywhere else on the planet, including giant tortoises, land iguanas and blue-footed boobies. With younger kids or non-swimmers, it’s a good idea to base yourself on one island and take day trips to others.

Iceland Drive around nature’s own theme park

Drive a 4x4 around the coast of Iceland and through its rugged core and you’ll take your children into another universe. In this land of volcanoes, waterfalls and fjords, all kinds of out-of-thisworld activities are possible. This is a place where you can ride across lava fields on native horses, snorkel rifts that cleave the Earth’s crust, and spot reindeer, seals and whales in the wild.

Iceland’s capital Reykjavik and the geothermal Blue Lagoon will warm you up before you head across the lava fields of the Reykjanes peninsula and past the bubbling mud pools and hot springs of Krísuvík. East from the town of Selfoss lie mighty waterfalls, notorious volcano Eyjafjallajökull, black-sand beaches and glaciers and icebergs you can explore by amphibious craft.

Other highlights as you reach the island’s eastern end and begin to turn back west are boat trips to see Papey Island puffins, Möðrudalur’s ash deserts and Lake Mývatn, where you can horseride, cycle, hike and visit more thermal baths. From Mývatn it’s an hour to Húsavík for whale watching on an oak fishing boat and a visit to the interactive Whale Museum.

Saving the best till last, head into the Highlands and Thingvellir National Park, where activities include lava tube and cave tours, a walk to view the top tier of Gullfoss waterfall, rafting, white-water canoeing and glacier snowmobiling.

USA Wild West adventures

The American West is every child’s cowboys-and-Indians dream, bookended by two different but equally compelling cities. Starting at scenic San Francisco or surreal Las Vegas, you can choose from a variety of routes that take in some of the world’s most awe-inspiring natural wonders across four US states: the land will force you to recalibrate your idea of ‘big’.

You can soar above the Grand Canyon with a scenic flight or thump across miles of ochre desert in a Jeep tour of Monument Valley’s monolithic sandstone buttles. For more gentle pursuits, stroll among the groves of giant sequoia trees (the largest living organisms on the planet) at Yosemite National Park, or embark on family-friendly walks that will take you among Bryce Canyon’s intricately weather-whittled totems of rock.

You can also cycle wilderness trails at Zion National Park, in the expansive state of Utah, that boast sweeping canyon panoramas, surge down rivers on inner-tubes, swim in sparkling lakes or take time out to learn about the Californian Gold Rush or the culture and history of the Navajo, the largest Indian tribe in the US. Your family will never forget nights at remote campsites and lodges, or days at ranches where they can saddle up, drive cattle and experience what life was like in the Old West.