Five-Hundred-Year-Old Firs at Francis/King Park

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

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

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

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

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

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

A 5.3 km loop through 300-year-old Douglas fir and a Garry oak meadow to Pickles Bluff, looking over farmland to Haro Strait.

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.

A warm little swimming lake with a sand beach 200 metres from the car, wrapped in a 3.9 km forest loop with water views most of the way.

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

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

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

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.