Cycle the Lochside Trail to Sidney

The two-lake, sandy-beach, Garry-oak-trail date fifteen minutes from downtown Victoria that somehow costs nothing except May-to-September parking.

Eagle Wing hunts orcas and humpbacks in the Salish Sea while a marine biologist narrates and you quietly grip the bow rail.

A 9 km ridge loop earns a 434 m summit above the Saanich Inlet, with the Malahat on the horizon.

The rugged coastal scramble locals call the West Coast Trail you can do in a day, with ancient petroglyphs and the Pacific doing its best.

Paddle the glassy freshwater lake where Canada's national rowers train, then reward yourselves at Hamsterly Beach with a swim and a snack.

A flat, shaded 2.6 km through big cedar to a sheltered saltwater lagoon with benches right at the water, behind Butchart Gardens.

Six ziplines and a treetop obstacle course in Langford: the cure for every polite, seated, sitting-across-a-table date.

Old-growth firs, a waterfall, a trestle, and in late autumn the river runs red with salmon while eagles watch from above.

A punchy 5 km return over glacier-scoured rock to a 449 m summit with the Saanich Inlet spread below.

Fifty-five kilometres of flat, car-free former railway where you can actually talk the whole way and the picnic is mandatory.

A Heritage Grove of Douglas fir around five centuries old, reached on a flat boardwalk that a wheelchair or a stroller can manage.

A lantern-lit guide leads you through the shadowy alleys of Canada's most haunted old town for an hour of murder, hauntings, and harbourside history.

Short, steep and just sketchy enough at the top that you'll naturally steady each other on the slabby rock.

A string of cedar-ringed emerald pools drilled into solid rock by the Sooke River, and yes, you can swim in them.