I had convinced myself that driving from Athens to Loutra Aidipsou would be a doddle. Three hours, maybe four with a coffee stop. Simple. What I had not accounted for was my spectacular inability to operate a Greek petrol pump, which led to me standing in a forecourt just outside Chalkida, flapping my arms at a bemused attendant while my hire car sat there mocking me with its empty tank. Turns out you pay first, then pump. Who knew? Not me, apparently. The attendant found it far funnier than I did.

By the time I rolled up to the property, I was already three hours late, slightly sweaty, and in desperate need of something stronger than the lukewarm water bottle rolling around my passenger footwell. But stepping out of the car, something shifted. The air smelled of pine and something faintly sulphurous, which I later learned was the thermal springs that make this corner of Evia famous. The villa sat there, all whitewashed walls and terracotta roof tiles, looking thoroughly unbothered by my dramatic arrival. A lemon tree in the garden was doing its best to drop fruit on my head as I fumbled for the key safe code. I took this as a warm welcome.

I had planned my entire week around walking. Proper striding-out stuff, boots and all. The first morning, I woke to brilliant sunshine streaming through the shutters and thought, "This is it. Greek island walking without the ferry faff." I set off towards the coastal path that runs north from the town, fully expecting to march for miles with the Aegean glittering beside me. I made it perhaps forty minutes before the sky, which had been cloudless at breakfast, decided to stage a rapid identity crisis. The rain came down like someone had upturned a bucket, warm but relentless, and I found myself sheltering under an olive tree that offered roughly the same protection as a wire colander.

There is something particularly humbling about being a British person caught out by weather abroad. You would think three decades of drizzle would have prepared me. Instead, I squelched back to the villa, my supposedly waterproof jacket having surrendered somewhere around the second kilometre, and stood in the kitchen dripping onto the tiles while I reconsidered my entire approach.

The following days became an exercise in improvisation. I learned to read the sky with the paranoid attention of a sailor, setting out early when the air felt still and dry. I discovered the path that winds up behind Loutra Aidipsou into the low hills, where pine forest gives way to scrubby maquis and the occasional goat track. The walking there is gentler than the coastal route, more forgiving when the weather turns, and the views down towards the narrow strait separating Evia from the mainland are worth every slightly uncertain footfall.

One morning, I climbed for an hour through mist so thick I could barely see ten metres ahead, convinced I was wasting my time. Then the sun burned through as I reached a small plateau, and suddenly I was standing above a cloud sea with the distant peaks of the mainland floating like islands. I sat on a rock and ate a slightly squashed cheese pie from the bakery in town, feeling unreasonably pleased with myself.

The thermal springs became my reward system. A morning hike, however truncated by weather, earned a soak in the public baths down in Loutra Aidipsou. The water emerges at something like eighty degrees, rich in minerals, and leaves your skin feeling vaguely miraculous. I struck up a conversation with an elderly Greek gentleman who spoke no English but communicated through expressive hand gestures that my walking boots were, in his opinion, completely inadequate. He was not wrong.

By the end of the week, I had abandoned any pretence of ambitious trekking. I walked shorter loops, sometimes twice in a day if the weather held, and learned to love the rhythm of setting out, retreating, setting out again. The British compulsion to press on regardless, to grimly march through rain because that is what one does, proved thoroughly useless here. The Greek approach made more sense: wait, adapt, try again later.

My final morning brought perfect conditions, naturally. I walked the coastal path properly at last, all the way to the small harbour where fishermen were mending nets and drinking coffee with the unhurried confidence of people who have never once panicked about a petrol pump. I thought about my first day, the flapping and the sweating and the lemon tree assault, and smiled at how completely different the same place could feel with a bit of patience. Some lessons, apparently, require both sunshine and rain to properly sink in.