Jocelyn Hill Hike (Gowlland Tod)

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

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

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

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.

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 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.

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.

85 trails and 46 km of singletrack on Mount Work, from gentle green runs to double-black drops, twenty minutes out.

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.

Earned by 2 km of dripping rainforest trail: a wild cove with a cliff waterfall, sea cave and rope swing.