I have never been so relieved to see a set of keys left under a terracotta pot in my life. The journey from Lamezia Terme airport to Montepaone had been the sort of comedy of errors that would make a Carry On film look understated. First, the hire car GPS decided that Calabria was technically optional and sent me up a goat track that grew progressively more goat and progressively less track. Then, in a moment of spectacular British overconfidence, I attempted to ask a local farmer for directions using my GCSE Italian, accidentally telling him I was pregnant with a small horse rather than looking for my holiday home. He was very kind about it. Offered me water and a look of profound sympathy.

By the time I rattled down the proper road to the property, the afternoon sun was doing that particular Calabrian thing where it somehow feels personal, like being lightly grilled by an affectionate relative. The place itself sat perched with the sort of casual hillside confidence I immediately envied. Whitewashed walls, that particular dusty pink of bougainvillea climbing everywhere it was not strictly invited, and a terrace that promised views worth the entire goat-related detour.

I dumped my bags with the enthusiasm of someone who had been sitting in various forms of transport for roughly fourteen hours and made straight for the walking shoes. This was, after all, the entire point of the trip. I had packed three different guidebooks, downloaded offline maps, and spent a frankly embarrassing amount of money on breathable fabrics. I was going to hike the Catanzaro coastline. I was going to stride purposefully along ancient paths. I was going to become the sort of person who used words like "undulating" without irony.

The first morning, I set off toward the hills behind Montepaone with the determined optimism of someone who had checked a weather app once and considered the matter settled. The path started beautifully, winding through olive groves where the trees looked older than most countries, their silver-green leaves shimmering in what I confidently assumed would remain sunshine. I had packed a light jumper in my rucksack, mostly out of British habit rather than any genuine meteorological concern. This was southern Italy in late spring. What could possibly go wrong?

The answer arrived approximately forty minutes later, in the form of a cloud formation that I can only describe as meteorologically spiteful. One moment I was photographing wildflowers and feeling wonderfully connected to nature. The next, the temperature dropped ten degrees, the wind arrived with what I can only call theatrical malice, and I found myself squinting into horizontal rain that seemed personally offended by my breathable fabrics. My expensive walking trousers, it turned out, were breathable in both directions with equal enthusiasm.

I squelched back to the property looking like someone who had lost a fight with a particularly aggressive fountain. The terrace, which had seemed so inviting the previous evening, now offered a front-row seat to a storm that made my carefully planned coastal hike about as appealing as a swim in the North Sea. I stood there, dripping onto the tiles, and had one of those moments of uncomfortable self-awareness that holidays sometimes provide. There I was, a person who had flown to one of the sunniest regions of Europe, standing in conditions that would not have seemed out of place in a Scottish August. I had let British weather optimism, that peculiar delusion where we convince ourselves that checking an app constitutes preparation, override basic common sense. I had brought three guidebooks and insufficient waterproofing. I had planned routes and not escape routes.

The storm passed, because storms do, and the afternoon returned to that golden Calabrian light that makes everything forgivable. I walked instead to the village itself, a gentler stroll that required no particular technical preparation beyond the ability to appreciate a very good espresso and the patience to be laughed at affectionately by a cafe owner when I attempted to order it. The hills would wait. The paths would still be there. And I had learned, at the approximate age of forty-two, that weather happens to you regardless of how expensive your rucksack was.