I have never been brilliant with directions, which is how I ended up driving our hire car down what I can only describe as a pedestrian promenade in Cattolica at half past two on a Saturday afternoon. The sat nav had chirped "turn left" with such confidence that I obeyed without question, only to find myself nose-to-nose with a gelato-toting family who looked about as surprised as I felt. Three-point turns have never been my forte, and performing one to the soundtrack of Italian tutting and a small dog's enthusiastic barking was not how I had imagined our arrival on the Emilia Romagna coast.

We were staying in one of those proper Italian holiday homes, the sort with terracotta roof tiles and shutters that actually function, about ten minutes' stroll from the beach. After my navigational humiliation, I needed that walk more than ever. The property sat on a quiet residential street, and the moment I stepped through the gate, the whole promenade fiasco began to fade. A small garden, a terrace with a slightly wobbly table, and the distant smell of someone else's barbecue. It felt immediately like the kind of place where you stop checking your phone.

The weather, I should mention, had been the entire reason for this trip. I had spent weeks studying forecasts with the intensity of a meteorologist, convinced that late May would deliver perfect walking conditions along this stretch of coast. Warm but not stifling, breezy but not Baltic. The reality, I discovered within forty-eight hours, was rather more theatrical. The first morning dawned grey and spitting, the sort of drizzle that makes a mockery of your carefully packed shorts. I stood on the terrace in my inadequate cotton jacket and accepted that my ambitious plan of hiking south towards Gabicce Monte would need revision.

By midday the clouds had performed their first vanishing act, and the temperature climbed with alarming speed. We set off along the lungomare, that wonderful Italian invention of a pavement dedicated entirely to the pleasure of strolling. The route north from Cattolica towards Misano Adriatico is flat, forgiving, and lined with pine trees that offer patchy but welcome shade. I walked with the overenthusiasm of someone compensating for lost time, while my other half adopted a more sensible pace that allowed for proper observation of beach hut architecture and the occasional grumpy cat.

The heat, though. I had not accounted for how quickly the Adriatic humidity would transform a pleasant constitutional into something resembling a minor endurance event. My water bottle, optimistically filled at the property, was empty before we reached the harbour at Misano. We took refuge in a bar where the proprietor seemed genuinely impressed by my sweat output, and I drank a lemon granita with the desperation of a man who had crossed a desert rather than three kilometres of paved coastline.

That evening, back on our terrace with the wobbly table, I studied the sky with newfound respect. The weather here does not transition gently; it announces itself. I had packed for a single climate and encountered three. The following days taught me to set out early, to carry more water than seemed reasonable, and to treat afternoon shade as a necessity rather than a luxury. My favourite walks became the dawn expeditions, when the promenade belonged to dog walkers and the occasional determined jogger, and the sea lay flat and silver-grey before the sun stirred it to life.

On our final morning, I woke before six and walked alone to the harbour. The fishing boats were returning, the men moving with the unhurried efficiency of people who have never once consulted a weather app. I thought about my sat nav disaster, my inadequate jacket, my empty water bottle. The gentle comedy of arriving somewhere convinced you understand it, then discovering you understand nothing at all. That is the peculiar pleasure of walking in unfamiliar heat, I suppose. The landscape reveals itself slowly, and your own limitations rather faster. I would do it all again tomorrow, though I might check the promenade for pedestrians first.