Mangonui, New Zealand

There's an antiquated air to MANGONUI, strung along a sheltered half-kilometre-long harbour off Doubtless Bay. A handful of two-storey buildings with wooden verandas have been preserved, some operating as craft shops or cafés, but this is still very much a working village. With a lively fishing wharf and a traditional grocery perched on stilts over the water, it makes the most obvious stopping point on the way north, and has access to some excellent beaches nearby.

Mangonui means "big shark", recalling the legendary chief Moehuri's waka which was supposedly led into the harbour by such a fish. But it was whales and the business of provisioning whaling ships that made the town: one story tells of a harbour so packed with ships that folk could leap between the boats to cross from Mangonui to the diminutive settlement of Hihi on the far shore. As whaling diminished, the kauri trade took its place, chiefly around Mill Bay, the cove five minutes' walk to the west of Mangonui.