I should have known the holiday was going to be eventful when I put the postcode into the sat nav and it directed me to a field full of very unimpressed goats. Three hours south of Rome, somewhere along the Lazio coast, and my carefully planned route to Montalto di Castro had dissolved into agricultural chaos. The goats, I must say, looked thoroughly judgmental. I wound down the window to ask directions, realised I had forgotten every Italian word I ever knew, and simply smiled at an elderly man on a scooter until he took pity on me and pointed back toward the coastal road.

The proper arrival, when it finally happened, could not have been more different. The property sat tucked among pine trees, a low-slung villa with terracotta tiles that seemed to glow in the afternoon heat. My host had left the key under a terracotta pot, which I promptly knocked over with the enthusiasm of a man who had spent forty minutes befriending livestock. The pot survived. My dignity did not.

I had arrived with grand ambitions. The weather forecast had promised twenty-eight degrees and clear skies, perfect conditions for the coastal walking I had researched obsessively. The Maremma Laziale, this stretch of coastline, is threaded with paths that wander through Mediterranean scrub and open onto beaches where the Tyrrhenian Sea does that impossible blue thing that makes you question every life choice that kept you in Britain. I had packed two pairs of walking boots, a hat with a proper neck flap, and enough sunscreen to protect a small village.

The first morning delivered on every promise. I set out early, heading south along the coastal track toward Capalbio Scalo. The path cut through macchia woodland, all wild rosemary and low juniper, the kind of vegetation that scratches your ankles and smells absolutely glorious. The sun sat low and golden, and I walked with that particular smugness of someone who has timed their holiday perfectly. I reached a small cove by mid-morning, stripped to my swimming costume, and floated in water so clear I could watch small fish investigating my knees with what I chose to interpret as admiration.

By afternoon, the weather had begun its betrayal. Clouds piled up from the west, not dramatic storm clouds but a thick, stubborn blanket that trapped the heat and turned the air soupy. I walked back slower, already feeling the first prickle of sunburn where my application had been, let us say, artistic rather than thorough. The temperature had not dropped, but the light had flattened, and the sea turned from jewel to pewter.

The next three days, the weather played a game I could not win. Each dawn broke clear and tempting, and each afternoon the humidity clamped down like a wet wool blanket. My walking plans became increasingly tactical. I would rise at six, gulp coffee, and march out while the air still moved. By eleven I would be back, showered and slightly triumphant, watching from the terrace as other holiday makers straggled home looking like they had swum fully clothed.

There was something quietly instructive in the adaptation. I had arrived with my itinerary, my routes, my vision of brisk coastal striding from dawn to dusk. The Lazio coast, in late summer, had other ideas. I learned to walk in shorter bursts, to find shade in the pine woods, to carry twice as much water as seemed reasonable. I discovered that the beach at Torre di Buranaccio, barely a mile north, was almost empty before eight in the morning, and that swimming at that hour, before the sun grew punitive, felt like a private miracle.

On my final evening, the weather broke properly. Not with drama, but with a softening, a breeze that finally carried some intent to cool. I walked slowly north along the shore, past the tower ruins, watching the light turn that particular honey colour that makes photographers weep and ordinary people stop walking to simply stand there. My feet were dusty, my shoulders still faintly pink, my water bottle nearly empty. The goats, mercifully, were nowhere in sight. I had not walked as far or as hard as I had planned. I had, I realised, walked exactly enough.