The drive from Pescara airport to Moscufo was meant to take forty minutes, but I managed to stretch it to an hour and a half thanks to my spectacular inability to operate an Italian petrol pump. There I stood, card declined, increasingly frantic gestures at the machine, until a kindly nonno took pity and showed me the secret button hidden beneath a flap that apparently everyone in Abruzzo knows about except hapless British tourists. I arrived at our holiday home slightly sweaty, smelling of diesel, and already in need of the local wine I had promised myself as a reward for navigating foreign roads.

The property itself, a solid stone farmhouse with warm terracotta roof tiles, sat nestled among rolling hills that seemed to fold into one another like layers of green pastry. My partner had booked it, waxing lyrical about authentic Abruzzo and the walking potential. I had simply nodded along, picturing gentle ambles between vineyards. The reality, I quickly discovered, was rather more vertical than my imagination had suggested.

We woke early the next morning to brilliant sunshine, the kind that makes a Brit immediately suspicious. I packed a rucksack with the confidence of someone who has watched exactly one documentary about hiking, and we set off toward the nearby hills. The paths around Moscufo wind through olive groves and past crumbling farmhouses where laundry flaps like surrender flags. Within twenty minutes I was breathing heavily and reconsidering every life choice that had led me to this incline. My partner, annoyingly fit, strode ahead while I developed what I can only describe as a personal relationship with a walking stick I found abandoned by a fence.

The weather held for two glorious days. We trekked through the Majella foothills, spotted distant villages perched impossibly on ridges, and ate packed lunches of pecorino and bread that tasted of actual sunshine. I began to fancy myself something of a walker, dropping phrases like "good gradient" into conversation and examining my boots with unnecessary seriousness.

Then the British weather arrived, though I suppose in Abruzzo it is simply weather. I woke to grey skies that lowered themselves onto the hills like a damp flannel. Rain began around mid-morning, not dramatic Italian thunderstorms but persistent, methodological precipitation that seemed personally directed at my hiking ambitions. We waited, because that is what British people do with weather. We waited through coffee, through a second coffee, through lunch. The rain continued with the steady commitment of a bureaucrat processing forms.

By afternoon I was pacing the farmhouse like a caged animal, staring out at olive trees being comprehensively soaked. My partner suggested reading. I suggested cards. We played three games of rummy with the enthusiasm of hostages. I found myself staring at ordnance survey maps, plotting imaginary routes, calculating exactly how waterproof my supposedly waterproof jacket actually was.

The following morning brought mist so thick I could barely see the neighbouring farmhouse. We attempted a short walk anyway, setting off with the determined optimism of people who have not yet learned their lesson. Within ten minutes we were navigating by touch, the path having dissolved into suggestion. I slipped on wet limestone, caught myself on a juniper bush, and stood there laughing at the absurdity of it all. Here I was, slightly lost in Abruzzo mist, clutching a shrub, having driven an hour and a half for the privilege.

We turned back, defeated but strangely cheerful, and spent the afternoon in Pescara instead, wandering the seafront under grey skies that felt comfortingly familiar. The Adriatic churned against the shore, and I ate fried seafood while my boots dried on a radiator back at the farmhouse.

The sun returned eventually, as sun does. We walked again, though with less swagger and more respect for the changeable mountain weather. I learned to pack a waterproof regardless of morning conditions, to check forecasts with the scepticism they deserve, and to appreciate the olive groves even through drizzle. The hills around Moscufo do not care about your plans. They simply exist, beautiful and indifferent, waiting for you to adapt to them rather than the reverse.

On our final morning I stood on the terrace watching mist clear from the valley below, revealing the patchwork of fields and woods we had tramped through. My legs ached satisfyingly. My boots had developed character, which is what we call damage when we are fond of something. I thought about that petrol pump, the abandoned walking stick, the juniper bush that had saved my dignity. The holiday had not gone to plan, not really. It had been better than that. It had been real, damp, occasionally uncomfortable, and entirely memorable. I raised my coffee cup to the hills, and to the particular humbling that only walking in unpredictable weather can provide.