Deborah Coddington: Serve visitors kina souffle with their bungy

As someone who cycles just about every day - 14km to the village and back, some 20km with friends for fun, around the property feeding horses and the pigs - I think a cycle track the length of New Zealand is a fabulous idea.

But the reportage so far has been anything but enthusiastic, with one sad sack in the Sunday Star-Times writing it is in "danger of becoming a reality". Where's the danger? Someone might fall off their bike and skin their knees?

Well, I suppose there is that. When you read that ACC pays out millions of dollars to people who "suffer" from insect bites and stings, you really have to wonder where the national spunk disappeared.

Every time there's a jetboat mishap or bungy jump near miss, we go into collective hand-wringing about the "dangers" of New Zealand as an adventure tourist attraction.

Yet we invented the jetboat engine, and we love to claim A. J. Hackett as one of our more successful entrepreneurs, so why not just accept that where there is risk, there is also potential tragedy?

If you can answer that question, you'll also be able to solve another mystery for me: why does Morning Report's educationi journalist never interview Avondale College principal Brent Lewis the NCEA, yet beat down others in the rush to talk about the stabbing of a teacher?

And don't tell me it's because National Radio is biased - wash your mouth out for such blasphemy.

Back to tourism. I cheered when Prime Minister John Key claimed the tourism portfolio for himself because of its importance to our small country. It reminded me of when Prime Minister David Lange grabbed education for the same reason, and we saw numerous changes for the better under Lange's watch.

So it is with offering the best to visitors, whether they be from overseas or New Zealanders keen to see the country before they leave town, to paraphrase a successful promotional jingle from the past.

We have to think beyond what we're already providing. Adventure tourism won't keep them happy forever, and not everyone - me included - wants to pay good money to pretend to commit suicide with their feet tied to a huge elastic rope.

Who would ever have thought the Central Otago Rail Trail would be so popular? And look what that has done for the economies of small settlements along the way.

This winter, a group of us (three QCs and a sheila) are paying good money to barge and bike through the Loire Valley, but if such a venture was on offer some place on a Cape Reinga-to-Bluff biking trail, we'd be among the first queuing to enjoy.

And why stop with bikes? Let's get really creative, and cater to those who aren't into pushbikes.

Walkers are a given, but what about including horse riders, and in the process, make sure the trail branches into areas hitherto unforeseen as attractive to tourists?

Last weekend's initial farm visits, organised by Federated Farmers to try to bridge the growing gap between New Zealand townies and their country cuzzies, was a huge success, to be repeated several times.

I was brought up on a farm, but I still loved visiting a high country sheep station last year, chatting to the owners and drinking in the scenery.

Route the cycle track over the Rimutakas, bring a group of tourists to our little place out of Martinborough, and I'll give them a weekend they'll never forget.

I'll take them to a special place on the East Coast where we'll gather a few paua, not for the dreaded leathery fritters, but sliced ultra-thin and quickly sauteed in garlic and sea salt, served in the beautiful shells which they can take back to their homeland.

Next I'll take them horse-riding along the south Wairarapa coast, across farms where your gaze stretches across Cook Strait to the Kaikouras, and we'll stop at the Lake Ferry pub for excellent John Dory and chips.

We'll climb up the pinnacles, swim in the rivers and, in winter, shoot a hare, then hunker down by a roaring fire with local pinot noir, kina souffle, saddle of hare, and the best cakes in the world, made by farmers' wives.

Sexist? Conservative? Boring? It won't appeal to the "let's get wasted and shagged" tourists but it's people my age with money this country needs to attract.

We've moved on from upmarket lodges every night, Michelin-star restaurants and yet another week in Tuscany.

So let's turn super ideas into reality.

As Geoffrey Kent, founder of Abercrombie & Kent said: "Travel is increasingly about the things money cannot buy, the shared experiences and treasured memories when we get together to celebrate the milestones in our lives."