Wellington city is surrounded by hills on the land. These include Mt Kaukau, Te Ahumairangi Hill, and Mt Victoria.
Mt Vic, as it is known to the locals, is the largest by area and is 196m high at the top.
The summit is easily reached from the city centre. A 30-minute walk, from Courtenay Place will get you to the top to the Mt Vic Lookout. It’s not a trek that requires backpacks and special walking gear, but it is quite steep in parts, so you need to be relatively fit. There are clearly marked paths for you to follow.
For bikers, there are numerous mountain bike trails around the mountain. These go down some serious slopes so you do need to be skilled in mountain biking to take advantage of these.
You will also come across many runners going up and down the mountain.
For the average tourist, there’s nothing quite like the view from Mount Victoria Lookout. You can see for miles across the middle of Wellington’s central city, to the other mountains, and beyond.
If you don’t fancy walking to the top, you can catch a regular bus from the city, that stops at the base of the lookout.
If you feel like a good walk, there are plenty of places for you. Once you are at the top, you can find loads of relatively flat walks. These might be through the pine forest, along tarmac roads, or down marked-out paths down the slopes of the hill.
You can take yourself to a number of suburbs from the mountain. These include Hataitai, Newtown, Roseneath, and the smaller bays along the Evans Bay inlet.