I should have known the Croatian sun would have the last laugh. After eighteen months of moaning about British drizzle, I packed three pairs of shorts, two sun hats, and a smug sense of superiority for my week at a villa in Seget Gornji, just above Trogir. The forecast said thirty degrees and cloudless. My mother said pack a mac. Mothers, as ever, know everything.

The journey from Split airport started well enough. I collected my hire car, a Fiat Panda that wheezed uphill like me after a flight of stairs, and followed the coastal road towards Trogir. The Adriatic glittered to my left, pine-scented hills rose to my right, and I felt properly Mediterranean. Then I missed the turning for Seget Gornji entirely, ending up in somebody's olive grove with a goat giving me what I can only describe as a disappointed look. Twenty minutes of reversing down a track barely wider than a sheep eventually deposited me at the villa, sweaty, swearing, and suddenly very aware that my "lightweight walking shoes" were actually just glorified plimsolls.

The villa itself perched on the hillside with that particular Dalmatian charm, all stone walls and terracotta roof, with a terrace overlooking the sea. I dumped my bags, laced up my inadequate footwear, and decided to walk down to the coast immediately. The path, I had read, was "a pleasant twenty-minute stroll." It was not. It was a steep, rocky descent that my plimsolls handled with all the grace of a newborn deer on ice. Halfway down, the sky, previously the colour of a tourism brochure, developed a bruise-grey patch to the west. I ignored it. British habit, perhaps, or simply the stubbornness of a man who has packed three pairs of shorts.

The first raindrop hit my forehead precisely as I reached the shoreline at Seget Donji. Within four minutes, I was standing under a pine tree that offered roughly the same protection as a wire colander. The storm that rolled in was not the gentle Mediterranean shower I had imagined. It was theatrical, biblical, the sort of rain that bounces six inches back off the pavement. I squelched back up the hill, my plimsolls now making a sound like someone eating soup very loudly, arriving at the villa looking like I had swum there.

The next morning, properly humbled, I set out again. This time with proper boots, a borrowed mac from the villa's thoughtful owners, and a new respect for Dalmatian weather patterns. I walked the coastal path towards Trogir old town, the historic centre perched on its little island, and found the storm had scrubbed everything clean. The stone glowed, the sea had that particular post-rain clarity, and my boots gripped properly. I spent hours wandering the narrow streets, getting deliberately lost, watching the local cats judge tourists with professional disdain.

The following days became a rhythm of walking and weather-watching. I hiked up to the church at Gospa od Prizidnice, the path winding through scrub and olive terraces, always with one eye on the horizon. The views across the Ciovo channel were worth every uncertain cloud, the islands scattered like dropped coins, Trogir's rooftops below like a jumble of terracotta puzzle pieces. When rain threatened, I retreated to konobas, those traditional taverns where grilled fish and local wine make waiting an activity rather than an inconvenience.

By my final day, I had developed what I can only call a meteorological sixth sense, reading the wind in the pines, the particular shade of grey on Mount Kozjak. I walked to Okrug Gornji and back, timing it between showers, arriving damp but triumphant. My plimsolls, dried and redeployed for terrace use only, sat in the corner like a lesson in humility.

I left Seget Gornji with proper walking boots on order, a borrowed mac in my suitcase, and a newfound appreciation for mothers, goats, and the particular personality of Dalmatian skies. The British weather had followed me, it seemed, or perhaps I had simply never learned to read anything else. Either way, I walked more than I planned, saw more than I expected, and got wet enough to remember it properly. Some holidays give you exactly what you need, even when it is not what you packed for.