I have never been brilliant at reading maps, which is how I ended up driving three times round the same mountain pass convinced I had missed a turning that did not actually exist. My partner sat in the passenger seat with that particular expression of British restraint, the one that says "I could say something" while staring resolutely at the scenery. The scenery, to be fair, was doing a lot of heavy lifting. Jagged limestone peaks rose on every side, their faces catching the late afternoon sun in shades of amber and rose that no photograph ever quite captures.

We were bound for Peio Terme, a spa property tucked into the Val di Sole where the Ortler Alps keep watch like stern grandparents. The website had promised walking trails, thermal waters, and that particular Dolomite air that makes your lungs feel they have been personally polished. What it had not promised was my spectacular failure to navigate the final five miles, which involved a wrong turn onto a farm track, a tense encounter with a herd of cows who owned the road in both the literal and spiritual sense, and a reversing manoeuvre that will haunt me until my dying day.

By the time we pulled into the car park, I was ready to apologise to everyone and everything. The building itself restored some equilibrium. It had that reassuring alpine solidity, wooden balconies with geraniums spilling over, and a general atmosphere of having been here since before anyone thought to worry about such trivialities as my driving. The receptionist greeted us with the kind of warmth that suggested she had seen worse arrivals, though perhaps not many.

Our room overlooked the valley, and I stood at the balcony doors while my partner unpacked with the quiet efficiency of someone who had spent three hours in a car with me and needed a moment of productive silence. Below, the walking trails ribboned through meadows already turning gold in the September heat. The weather had been unseasonably warm, a proper Indian summer that the locals kept remarking upon with that particular Italian combination of delight and mild suspicion.

I had packed for autumn mountain conditions. Thick socks, waterproof layers, the serious walking boots I had bought in a fit of optimism three years prior and worn perhaps twice. The forecast showed twenty-six degrees and uninterrupted sunshine for the week ahead. There is something humbling about standing in thermal underwear weather in a room full of merino wool, realising that your careful preparations have been defeated by a high pressure system over the Mediterranean.

We abandoned the heavy kit and set out that first evening in trainers and light shirts, following a trail that climbed gently through larch woods towards the Stelvio Pass road. The path was dusty, the kind of dry that makes every footfall whisper. Other walkers passed us in shorts and sandals, some with dogs trotting happily off-lead, and I felt the particular foolishness of the over-prepared British traveller encountering actual warmth.

The light began to soften as we reached a meadow where the trail forked, one path continuing upward towards higher peaks, the other dropping to follow a stream back towards the village. We chose the lower route, walking through lengthening shadows while the mountains above us turned the colour of burnt sugar. The stream ran clear and cold, a reminder that even in this heat, the Alps keep their own counsel about temperature.

That evening we sat in the thermal baths, the warm mineral water doing something restorative to my legs and my pride. Through the windows, the last light clung to the highest peaks. My partner, softened by sulphur and scenery, admitted that the cow incident had been "quite funny actually, in retrospect." I chose to take this as generous.

The week that followed brought more walking, more unexpected warmth, more occasions where I had to acknowledge that the mountains do not consult your packing list before arranging their weather. We climbed to alpine lakes where we swam in water that made us gasp and laugh in equal measure. We walked through orchards where apples hung heavy and ready, the valley's other harvest beyond the summer tourism. Each evening returned us to those thermal waters, to the balcony with its geraniums, to the slow realisation that being wrong about the weather had been a kind of liberation.

I think sometimes we pack our expectations as carefully as our clothes, and both can prove equally unsuited to what actually arrives. I came to the Dolomites prepared for hardship and found instead ease, warmth, the simple pleasure of walking without urgency through landscapes that have watched such human fretting for millennia. The cows, I suspect, understood this all along.