I have never been so grateful for a pair of worn-out walking boots in my entire life. They saved my dignity, if not my life, on the winding coastal road down to our Trogir Kastel Novi holiday let last June.

The trouble began with my own misplaced confidence. Having navigated Split airport without incident, collected the hire car, and even managed to operate a Croatian toll booth, I had begun to fancy myself something of a Mediterranean adventurer. This hubris lasted precisely until I missed the turning for Kastel Novi and found myself committed to a single-track lane that appeared to be conducting an experiment in how steep a road could become before qualifying as a staircase. The sat nav, in what I can only describe as a betrayal, suggested I continue for another four hundred metres. I did so, and promptly arrived in someone's courtyard, where an elderly gentleman was watering his tomatoes with the placid expression of a man who has watched many British tourists make this exact error.

Reversing out required three-point turns that became seventeen-point turns, much gesticulating from my passenger, and what I am certain was suppressed laughter from the tomato gentleman. By the time we reached the property, my hands were welded to the steering wheel and my pride was somewhere back up that lane, possibly being adopted by a local cat.

The Trogir Kastel Novi itself, though, proved an immediate balm. A stone house with that particular Dalmatian solidity that suggests it has witnessed empires rise and fall and found the whole business rather tedious. The terrace overlooked the Kastela Bay, and in the late afternoon light the water had that impossible Adriatic blue that makes British seaside photography look like it was taken through dirty spectacles. I stood there with a beer from the local Konzum, still slightly trembling from my driving ordeal, and felt something unknot in my shoulders.

We had arrived with ambitious walking plans. The coastal path between the Kastela settlements, the climb to Kozjak's lower ridges, perhaps even a longer trek toward the historic core of Trogir itself. My companion, who had actually read guidebooks rather than merely intending to, spoke of medieval fortifications and olive groves and something called the "Kastelanski put" that sounded appropriately rugged.

The weather, naturally, had its own agenda.

The first morning dawned with a sky the colour of old dishwater and a wind that seemed to have trained in the Scottish Highlands before emigrating south. We set out anyway, because we are British and this is what we do. The coastal path from Kastel Novi toward Kastel Stari offered some shelter, winding between stone houses and sudden glimpses of agitated sea. Fishermen nodded at us with the resigned politeness of people who know better than to question the sanity of tourists in inadequate waterproofs.

By midday the rain had graduated from persistent to theatrical. We took refuge in a konoba near Kastel Stari, where the proprietor seemed genuinely moved by our bedraggled state and produced prsut and cheese with the air of someone administering emergency rations. We ate watching the weather assault the harbour, and I experienced that particular British emotion of finding genuine contentment in having one's plans comprehensively defeated by meteorology.

The following days established a pattern. Morning optimism, a promising hour of walking, then some form of atmospheric intervention. We grew proficient at reading the clouds above the Kozjak range, learning to distinguish between "probably fine for another forty minutes" and "abandon all hope immediately." The terrace at our Trogir Kastel Novi became command central for these assessments, coffee cups in hand, debating whether that darkening toward Split constituted a genuine threat or mere atmospheric posturing.

There was something genuinely educational in this rhythm, though I hesitate to sound too philosophical about what was essentially a series of damp strolls. The landscape revealed itself differently in varying conditions. Bright sun made the stone blinding and the tourist spots crowded; grey skies brought out textures in the old walls, turned the sea moody and complicated, emptied the paths of all but the most committed. We walked the shorter circuit to Kastel Stafilic one morning in proper rain, and found ourselves alone with the medieval towers and the sound of water on limestone.

My boots, those same scuffed companions from the initial driving disaster, developed a squelch that became almost companionable. I caught myself talking to them at one point, which I choose to attribute to holiday relaxation rather than incipient madness.

The Kozjak foothills remained largely theoretical for us, visible temptation rather than conquered territory. We attempted the lower trail toward Mastrinka one morning, but a combination of slippery stone and my own questionable balance saw us retreat with dignity partially intact. Some landscapes demand better weather or better walkers, and we were prepared to accept our limitations with the grace of the moderately fit approaching middle age.

What we did manage, repeatedly and with growing affection, was the network of paths connecting the seven Kastela settlements. These are not dramatic hikes by Alpine standards, but there is something deeply satisfying in walking through continuous human habitation that spans centuries, in the way the stone changes character between villages, in the sudden gardens and the unexpected chapels. The weather made each outing slightly unpredictable, which in retrospect was rather the point.

By our final evening, the wind had dropped and the sunset performed properly for the first time. We sat on that terrace with wine from the supermarket that had become our local, watching the lights come on across the bay toward Trogir proper. My boots sat inside, slowly drying, their work done. I thought about all the walking we had not managed, the grander routes abandoned to cloud and rain, and found I could not regret any of it. There is a particular quality to holiday walking that has nothing to do with distance covered or summits achieved, and everything to do with the slow accumulation of place and moment.

The tomato gentleman, I imagined, would have understood perfectly.