Swim and Loop Matheson Lake

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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