I have never been one to trust a weather app, and my trip to Rab Kampor in Kvarner Bay proved me right in the most spectacular fashion. The journey from Rijeka Airport had been straightforward enough, if you count a sat-nav that insisted the Adriatic was a shortcut and a moment at a petrol station where I confidently asked for "benzin" only to realise I was holding a bottle of sparkling water. Small victories.

The ferry from Jablanac to Rab Island was where the trouble began. Not with the crossing itself, which was glassy calm and almost insultingly beautiful, but with my packing. I had checked the forecast obsessively for a week. Sunshine, it promised. Twenty-six degrees, it swore. So I had filled my rucksack with shorts, two threadbare t-shirts, and a pair of sandals held together by stubbornness and hope. The walking boots stayed in the cupboard at home. I remember looking at them and thinking, "Not this time, you heavy beasts." Reader, I was a fool.

The Rab Kampor property sat nestled in pine woods near Kampor village, a proper stone cottage affair with terracotta tiles and shutters that clattered in any breeze worth mentioning. My host, a wiry chap called Goran, handed me the keys with a look I now understand was pity. "Weather changes quick here," he said, gesturing at the flawless blue above us. I nodded sagely, as if I, a British person, did not know this in my very bones.

That first afternoon I walked the coastal path towards Suha Punta, determined to make the most of my sunshine wardrobe. The trail wound through maquis scrub with the sea winking through gaps in the greenery, and I felt unbearably smug. This was the life. This was why I had ignored the boots. I found a rocky cove and sat there eating prsut and cheese like a man who had planned everything perfectly.

The storm rolled in at four in the morning. Not gradually, not politely, but with a clap of thunder that had me sitting bolt upright wondering if the roof had departed for the mainland without us. Rain came horizontally. The pines outside my window bent like repentant sinners. I lay there in my inadequate t-shirt and shorts, suddenly aware that every item of clothing I possessed would be useless for whatever tomorrow brought.

By dawn the storm had passed, leaving a transformed world. The air smelled of crushed rosemary and wet stone. The temperature had dropped twelve degrees. I stood on the terrace in my sandals, which squelched with every step, and contemplated my options. The forecast now showed nothing but grey for three days. Grey with ambition. Grey with a point to prove.

Goran found me at the property gate, staring at the Kamenjak hill that rises behind Kampor. "You want to walk?" he asked. I explained about the boots. He produced a pair of wellies from his shed, two sizes too large, with a daisy pattern clearly intended for someone else entirely. "Better than sandals," he said, not unkindly.

So I walked. I walked the woodland trail towards Dundo forest in daisy wellies and borrowed socks, my shorts flapping against goose-pimpled legs. The path was red mud, gloriously treacherous, and I slipped twice within the first half mile. Each time I picked myself up, covered in pine needles and humiliation, and pressed on. The forest was extraordinary in the aftermath, every surface beaded with moisture, the silence broken only by dripping water and my own laboured breathing.

I reached the old stone cross at Veli Vrh by midday, soaked through despite a borrowed jacket from Goran's wife, and sat there eating a soggy sandwich while clouds scudded low overhead. The view across Kvarner Bay was muted, grey-green water meeting grey-white sky, the islands beyond barely visible. It was not the Croatia of the brochures. It was better somehow. More honest.

The walk down was slower, my wellies developing an impressive squeak that announced my approach to every startled lizard. I passed a German couple in proper Gore-Tex, their expressions suggesting they had never seen anything quite so ridiculous as a British man in floral wellies and shorts, picking his way through a Croatian forest in weather that belonged to Skegness in November.

By the time I reached Kampor village, the rain had started again, fine and persistent. I found a konoba and ordered wine I could not pronounce, sitting there steaming gently while locals pretended not to notice. The proprietor brought me a blanket without being asked, which I choose to interpret as kindness rather than commentary.

That evening, back at the property, I stood again on the terrace. The clouds were breaking, finally, strips of pale sky appearing like promises. My wellies stood by the door, mud-caked and heroic. My legs bore scratches from maquis scrub and bruises from my slips on the trail. I had walked perhaps eight miles in conditions that my app had not predicted, in clothing that my app had recommended, and I had never felt more pleased with myself.

The British weather had followed me to Croatia, or perhaps I had simply brought the appropriate attitude for it. Either way, I had my walking adventure. It was not the one I had packed for. It was not the one I had planned. But sitting there with a borrowed blanket and a glass of local grappa, watching the last clouds tear themselves apart over Kvarner Bay, I decided that some mishaps are worth the trouble they cause. The boots would come next time. They would come, and they would probably be unnecessary. That is the way of things, and I would not have it otherwise.