The Putangiura Pinnacles, an hour’s drive south of Martinborough, are a favourite filming location of Peter Jackson’s to portray horror and a sense of imminent doom. These soaring earth pillars, also known as hoodoos, featured in Jackson’s zombie comedy Braindead (a film so gory it was heavily cut or banned in several countries) and starred as “The Path of the Dead” in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.

It really is a unique setting and as we ventured deeper into this labyrinth of weathered, naturally sculpted needles of stone, I soon started to see why Jackson keeps coming back here. Even in real life, without the use of cinematic techniques, it is an eerie but strangely beautiful place.

When the light started fading and the spearheaded shadows of the eroded pinnacles darted across the valley floor, I started imagining all sorts of things. Hobbits and elves, but mostly the dark forces creeping up on me from behind.

Two trails start from the DOC campsite on the Putangiura Stream at the eastern end of Palliser Bay that can be combined to form a circuit. Both share the same track until they split at a trail junction 500m east of the campsite.

Turn left to climb to a lookout on a ridge overlooking the maze of pinnacles, or follow the trail that continues across large pebbles up the stream bed to the base of the pillars. Up close, you can see that almost every hoodoo is topped by an arrowhead, a cap of harder stone that is larger in size than the diameter of the stone pillar and protects the hoodoo from erosive rain.

After your walk, continue down the road for 25 minutes, to where Cape Palliser Lighthouse sits on the rugged Wairarapa Coast and the largest fur seal colony in the North Island lazes on the rocks.