I have never been so grateful for a pair of broken flip-flops in my entire life. There we were, my partner and I, crawling along the coastal road from Split Airport in our hire car, both of us still wearing the sandals we had optimistically packed for what the brochure promised would be a sun-drenched Dalmatian escape. Mine chose that exact moment, somewhere between the airport roundabout and the turnoff for Trogir, to snap clean through. The thong part, I mean. One minute I was wiggling my toes in anticipation, the next I was performing an involuntary one-shoed hobble into a petrol station forecourt. The woman behind the counter looked at me with the weary patience of someone who has seen many British tourists arrive in various states of disarray.

We found our holiday home in Plano, a quiet spot just northeast of Trogir proper, and I will be honest: my first impression was dominated less by the charming stone exterior and more by the sheer relief of getting off that road. The Dalmatian coast does not believe in straight lines. It twists and clings to the hillside like a goat that refuses to be dislodged. Our little terrace, when I finally limped out to inspect it, offered a view of olive groves rolling down toward the sea, and something in my chest unclenched. Even with one bare foot and a mood to match, I could feel the place working on me.

The weather, though. That is where this story really begins.

We had planned, as you do, for the full Mediterranean fantasy. Morning swims, afternoon lazing, perhaps a gentle stroll to the nearest konoba for grilled fish and local wine. The first morning delivered on exactly none of this. I woke to grey skies and a wind that had apparently taken a wrong turn somewhere in the Adriatic and decided to punish our little terrace personally. My partner peered out from beneath the duvet, muttered something about British weather having followed us here, and retreated deeper under the covers.

But I had brought walking boots. Proper ones, with actual ankle support and everything. A moment of uncharacteristic foresight that I now credit to whatever part of my brain still remembers that mountains exist and weather happens. The Central Dalmatian hinterland rises up behind the coast in a series of limestone ridges and scrub-covered hills, and I proposed, perhaps too cheerfully, that we explore them.

The path from Plano toward the Okrug hills starts innocently enough. You wander past houses with their shutters closed against the wind, through olive groves where the trees have been twisted into permanent gestures of endurance by the bora and the sirocco battling it out across the centuries. Then the ground tilts upward, and you find yourself on a track that switchbacks through maquis scrub, the sea occasionally visible through gaps in the vegetation, always that particular Adriatic blue even under cloud.

We walked for perhaps two hours that first morning, the wind pushing at our backs, then our faces, then apparently from directly above in some meteorological trick I still do not understand. My partner, who had packed for beach idleness and was now wearing three layers of inadequate summer clothing, developed what I can only describe as a stoic grimace. We passed a shepherd with his flock, the bells making a sound like a slow-motion percussion section, and he nodded at us with what I choose to believe was respect for our stubbornness rather than pity for our poor preparation.

The rain started as we reached the highest point of our intended route. Not dramatic thunderstorm rain, but a steady, committed drizzle that seemed personally invested in our discomfort. We had a choice: continue the planned loop and descend toward the coast, or turn back the way we had come. My map, which I had photographed on my phone in a moment of misplaced confidence, showed a path continuing east toward a ridge with supposedly spectacular views. The rain said otherwise. We turned back, slipping occasionally on limestone that had transformed from grippy to treacherous in minutes.

That evening, huddled in our holiday home with the heating on and a bottle of Plavac Mali from the supermarket in Trogir, we laughed about it. Properly laughed. There is something about shared mild suffering that bonds you, something about being inadequately dressed in a foreign landscape that strips away pretension. We had come for the postcard Dalmatia and found something more interesting: a place with weather, with texture, with hills that demand effort rather than merely decorating the background.

The next three days continued in much the same pattern. Morning grey, sometimes clearing by afternoon, sometimes not. We walked regardless. The coastal path toward Trogir proper, which becomes a proper promenade as you approach the old town, offered easier going and the compensation of coffee stops when the rain intensified. The historic centre itself, that remarkable little island of Venetian architecture, felt almost deserted in the off-season conditions, and we wandered the narrow streets with a sense of privileged access, as if the city had opened up just for the stubborn few who had not stayed home.

One afternoon, the clouds lifted with theatrical suddenness somewhere between our terrace and the hill we had been eyeing for days. We seized the moment, drove to the trailhead near Seget, and climbed properly. The path there is steeper, rougher, threading through pines that smell of resin and heat even when the air is cool. At the top, the view opened across the Trogir archipelago, islands scattered like broken pottery across the water, and we sat on a rock and ate bread and cheese and felt genuinely pleased with ourselves.

I think about that broken flip-flop now with genuine affection. Without it, I might never have laced up those boots, never have discovered that the Central Dalmatian Riviera in uncertain weather offers something the sunshine version cannot quite match. The walking here is not dramatic by Alpine standards, not remote by Scottish standards, but it has a particular quality of exposure and reward, of Mediterranean vegetation clinging to karst terrain, of sudden views where you expected only more scrub.

We did eventually get our swimming day, a single afternoon of warmth before departure when the water still felt brisk and the beach at Okrug Gornji was populated mainly by locals who clearly found the temperature perfectly adequate. I waded in up to my knees and declared it sufficient, while my partner, made braver by our walking adventures, actually swam.

I left the broken sandals in the bin at the holiday home. A small sacrifice to whatever god presides over travel mishaps that turn out, against all expectation, to improve everything.