I have never been brilliant at reading maps, which is how I ended up driving our hire car down what I can only describe as a goat track somewhere outside Monterubbiano, convinced it was the main road to our holiday let. My partner sat in the passenger seat making that particular face she does when she is trying to be supportive but also wonders how she ended up with someone who once got lost in a multi-storey car park. The sat nav had given up on us entirely, displaying nothing but a blank grey screen and what felt like a heavy digital sigh.

Three-point turns on a slope in thirty-degree heat are not my forte. By the time we found the actual entrance to the property, I was sweating through my linen shirt and had developed a new and profound respect for Italian agricultural vehicles, several of which had passed us with what I can only assume was amused pity.

But then we stepped out of the car, and honestly, the whole palaver felt worth it. The place sat perched among rolling hills with that particular honey-coloured light you only seem to get in Marche, everything shimmering slightly as if the world had been gently toasted. Our terrace looked out over olive groves and, somewhere beyond them, the distant glimmer of the Adriatic. I stood there with my ridiculous sweat patches and felt immediately forgiven by the landscape.

We had arrived with grand walking plans, naturally. The coastal paths around the Monte Conero area were supposed to be our focus, those dramatic limestone cliffs dropping to turquoise water, the sort of scenery that makes you feel obliged to use words like "breathtaking" even though you have promised yourself you will not. I had packed proper boots, breathable socks, one of those hats with a flap for the neck that my partner had banned me from wearing in public. I was ready.

The first morning, we set off early for a hike near Sirolo, full of that particular self-congratulatory energy of people who have got up before nine on holiday. The path wound through scrubby maquis, the air thick with wild thyme and the occasional furious lizard. We made it perhaps forty minutes before the heat settled on us like a heavy blanket left too long on a radiator. I am not saying I was struggling, but I did find myself staring longingly at a patch of shade cast by a very small bush, contemplating whether two adults could reasonably fit under it.

By midday, we had retreated to a beach bar, boots abandoned in favour of iced lemon granita, watching braver souls than us continue along the cliff paths. There is something humbling about Mediterranean heat, the way it casually reorders your priorities. We had planned to be serious walkers, striding purposefully along the Sentiero delle Due Sorelle or whatever other dramatically named route we had read about. Instead, we became people who walked gently to lunch, then slowly back for a siesta, then out again for an evening stroll when the temperature dropped to something that did not feel personally offensive.

And honestly? It suited us better. The early mornings became about wandering through Monterubbiano itself, the village quiet except for the occasional Vespa and the sound of someone sweeping their doorstep with the kind of dedication I have never managed to apply to anything. The evenings were for longer ambles, down lanes lined with sunflowers, through vineyards where the grapes were beginning to show that dusty bloom they get before harvest.

I still feel a small twinge about those coastal paths, the ones we never quite conquered in the way I had imagined. But I have learned, slowly, that holidays have their own logic, and fighting it is about as sensible as arguing with Italian road signage, which is to say not sensible at all. We walked plenty, just differently, following shade and breeze and the promise of cold water rather than any proper itinerary. The cliffs will still be there, dramatic and indifferent, waiting for some future version of myself who perhaps packs lighter neck flaps and a more realistic attitude to afternoon temperatures.

On our last evening, we walked up to the village from the property as the light turned golden again, past the old walls, past a group of elderly men solving the world's problems outside the bar. I was not lost, not even slightly, and I felt genuinely proud of this until I realised we were essentially just walking back to where we had started, which even I can usually manage. Still. Progress.