We had been driving for what felt like fourteen hours but was probably closer to four when I realised I had left my walking boots on the kitchen table in Bristol. Not in the boot of the car. Not accidentally packed in my partner's bag. On the actual kitchen table, next to the toaster, where I had placed them the night before with the smug satisfaction of someone who thinks they are terribly organised.

My partner Dave said nothing for a full minute, which in our relationship is the equivalent of a volcanic eruption. Then he simply said, "Well," and kept driving. The Croatian motorway stretched ahead, all shimmering heat and pine trees, and I stared at my canvas plimsolls with the sinking feeling that they were about to become my only footwear for a walking holiday.

We were headed to Fazana, a little fishing village on Istria's western coast, where we had booked what the website called a "traditional stone house" with a terrace and sea views. I had packed for serious hiking. Ordinance Survey mindset. Waterproofs in layers. A rucksack with a hydration system. And now I was going to tackle the Istrian landscape in shoes I had bought for a friend's wedding in 2019.

The house, when we finally found it down a narrow lane that Dave described as "optimistic" for our hire car, was genuinely lovely. Thick stone walls, shutters that actually worked, and a terrace that looked out over the Adriatic with that particular blue you only seem to get in this corner of the Mediterranean. I stood there in my plimsolls, breathing in pine and salt, and felt the peculiar shame of the ill-prepared British traveller.

Our plan had been to walk the Lungomare, the old coastal path that runs for miles along the Istrian shore. Proper boots territory, or so I had told Dave during my extensive pre-holiday briefing. Instead, we set off the next morning with me in my wedding plimsolls and Dave trying not to look at my feet.

The path from Fazana towards Puntizela starts gently enough, winding through olive groves and past little coves where locals were already swimming. The stone was warm underfoot, and for perhaps twenty minutes I felt smug. Who needs boots anyway? This was basically a beach promenade.

Then the weather turned.

Not dramatically, not with thunder or anything cinematic. Just a slow greying of the sky, a thickening of the air, and suddenly that heavy Mediterranean rain that falls like someone has upturned a bathtub. The path, which had been dry and friendly, became slick with clay and pine needles. My plimsolls, never designed for anything more demanding than a church car park, absorbed water with the enthusiasm of a kitchen sponge.

We sheltered under an olive tree that offered approximately no protection whatsoever. Dave was wearing proper boots, I noted bitterly. Gore-Tex. Ankle support. The full sensible footwear experience. He looked at my feet, now visibly squelching, and actually laughed. "At least you didn't forget your waterproof jacket," he said, which was true, though the jacket was currently doing an excellent job of channeling rainwater directly into my waistband.

We squelched back to Fazana, me slipping on every other step, my plimsolls making a noise like someone walking on wet sponges. The village, when we reached it, had transformed in the rain. The fishing boats were covered, the terrace cafes had pulled in their chairs, and everything smelled of wet stone and grilled sardines from somewhere nearby.

I stood on our terrace that evening, boots drying in a shape that suggested they would never be the same again, watching the rain clear and the Adriatic turn silver in the returning light. Dave brought me a glass of local Malvazija and said, "Same walk tomorrow?"

I bought a pair of cheap trainers from a supermarket in Pula the next morning. They had a picture of a tennis player on the side and cost approximately the price of a coffee in Bristol. We walked the Lungomare properly after that, through pine woods and past the Brijuni Islands floating in the haze, and my feet stayed dry enough to enjoy it.

There is something about British holiday planning, I have decided, that assumes the worst weather will find us wherever we go. We pack for rain in August. We bring layers for a heatwave. And sometimes, as I discovered in Fazana, the weather does exactly what we fear, but the thing that actually undoes us is the entirely preventable mistake we made ourselves, standing in the kitchen the night before, feeling terribly organised.

I still have those plimsolls. They live in the back of the wardrobe now, slightly misshapen, permanently stained with Istrian clay. I keep them as a reminder that the best walking stories rarely come from the walks that go exactly to plan.