The Coromandel Peninsula juts out of the East coast of the North Island of New Zealand. 85km long, at its centre it has a series of forested peaks with most of the towns and villages clustered around the coastline. As it’s within striking distance of Auckland and Hamilton, the Coromandel is a popular holiday spot for Kiwis who love biking, tramping (hiking in other parts of the world) and life on, in or by the water.

For me, summer isn’t summer at all without immersing myself in the sea at least once. So as it was already January, I organised a weekend away in Whitianga. We stacked the car full of parasols, deckchairs and body boards (my mother inexplicably brought a water melon) and headed off from Hamilton, through Te Kauwhata and on to Thames, our first stop on the peninsula. Now Thames is an old gold-mining town and it still has that feel of a frontier town, but there’s still gold to be found here. Cafe Melbourne is a little piece of Melbourne in the Coromandel. With fabulous coffee, cabinet food and menu items, it’s a cool space to eat and then if you want indoor plants, specialist food items or a gin distillery, you’ll find them all within a hop, skip and a jump of the cafe itself. On Saturdays, Thames has a market and one of my favourite stalls is the dog-treat stall with all its canine customers lined up, tails wagging, ready to chose their treat of choice.

Home to not one, but two bookshops, Thames scores highly on my bookshop to head of population rating system (less of a system, more of a guesstimate). Carson’s bookshop is an Indie bookshop on the Main Street with a well-curated selection of books including classics. Their YA and children’s sections are particularly good. The icing on the cake, is the delicious smell of coffee wafting through an open door that leads straight into a coffee shop called Hi Stranger! Books and coffee on the same premises, an absolute winner. Over the road is Land of Books and it really is just that, shelves upon shelves of vintage and second-hand books. On my first visit here I found a beautiful Folio Society edition of Excellent Women and on my second, a whole pile of different Tracy Chevalier books.

Back on the road, we turned inland onto State Highway 25A and followed the ridges and curves of the hills over the centre of the peninsula before coming back down to its East coast. The road flicks in and around Pauanui and Tairua before heading to Whitianga. One of the communities that makes up Mercury Bay, Whitianga has all the facilities needed by a permanent community, but also things that cater to a holiday crowd; good restaurants and cafes, lifestyle shops and spas. It also has, you guessed it, a bookshop. The Mercury Bay Cancer Support Trust has a second-hand bookshop at the top of town. Well laid out with a varied selection, I spent a happy hour in there and came away with a stack of books that I never knew I needed including a signed copy of Breath by Tim Winton.

As well as stopping at the bookshop, here is my line-up of other must-dos in and around Mercury Bay:

1. Get the tiny ferry from Whitianga to Cook’s Beach. The journey is over in 2 minutes, but that’s half the charm

2. Dig a hole at low tide on Hot Water Beach and make your own spa bath

3. Visit The Lost Spring in Whitianga. A hot pool, spa and restaurant complex, it’s a little slice of Rarotonga in the middle of the Coromandel

4. Walk the track from Hahei to Cathedral Cove (note it’s quite steep with stairs in places) for views along the coastline and to enjoy the Cove itself. You can then get a water taxi back to Hahei!