I have never been brilliant at reading maps. This becomes important shortly.

We had been driving from Milan Malpensa for the best part of an hour, winding through Lombardy with the windows down and my partner doing that thing where he confidently ignores the satnav. The lake kept peeking through the trees, that impossible blue that makes you understand why people paint landscapes. I was already mentally composing my smug postcard messages. Then we hit Luino, or rather, we hit what I thought was Luino, and I spotted a narrow lane plunging toward the water. "That looks right," I said, pointing with the authority of someone who had glanced at the booking confirmation once, three weeks ago.

It was not right. It was spectacularly not right. We ended up on a private drive belonging to someone who definitely did not rent holiday flats, wedged between a stone wall and a very judgmental cypress tree. Reversing out took twelve minutes and most of my dignity. My partner said nothing. His silence was louder than any commentary.

When we finally found the actual property, tucked along the proper lakeside road with its terrace facing Lago Maggiore, I practically fell out of the car with relief. The building sat there all cream walls and green shutters, utterly unbothered by my chaos. Our flat was on the first floor, and I climbed the stairs with the particular exhaustion that comes from being wrong in a vehicle.

I threw open the terrace doors before unpacking anything, because priorities. The lake spread out like someone had spilled turquoise paint, mountains rising on the far shore in layers of blue-grey. A ferry was cutting across toward the Swiss side, leaving a white trail. I stood there in my motorway-crushed linen trousers, suddenly aware that I had not changed my socks since Gatwick.

The weather was doing that perfect late-spring thing, warm enough to make you greedy for outdoor plans. We had brought walking boots with the serious intention of proper hiking. The Sentiero di Gandria, the lakeside path toward Ponte Tresa, all those routes I had bookmarked with athletic optimism. I had envisioned striding along coastal trails, stopping for espresso at tiny villages, returning with sun-pinked cheeks and interesting anecdotes about local wildflowers.

What actually happened was that the heat arrived. Not gentle Mediterranean warmth, but proper, thick, lake-reflected heat that made the pavement shimmer. By ten the next morning, the terrace tiles were too hot for bare feet. I had not packed for this. I had packed for striding, not for melting.

So our walking plans adapted, as holiday plans must. We became experts in the early morning coastal stroll, setting out before the sun cleared the eastern ridge. The path from Luino toward Germignaga runs flat and forgiving along the shore, through oleander and past fishing boats pulled up on shingle. We walked it in the grey-blue light of seven in the morning, before the day had properly decided what it was doing, and it felt like stealing something precious.

By midday we retreated to the terrace with books and the excuse of "acclimatising." The lake became busy with kayakers and paddleboarders, people who had clearly checked the weather properly. I watched them with the particular envy of someone whose ambitious hiking itinerary had dissolved into strategic napping.

On our third morning, we attempted something braver. The path climbing from Maccagno toward the mountain villages, advertised as a gentle coastal ascent. It was not gentle. It was not coastal for long. Within twenty minutes we were sweating through our optimistic start, stopping every few paces to admire the view, which is walker code for needing to breathe. We turned back at a chapel with a water tap, defeated but weirdly cheerful about it. Some walks are about reaching somewhere. That one was about discovering our sensible limits.

The heat broke on our final day, a thunderstorm rolling down from the Alps in the afternoon, turning the lake an angry green-grey. We had already walked our morning mile, already earned our afternoon spritz. I sat on the terrace watching the rain come across the water, feeling smug about nothing in particular, my failed map-reading and my abandoned mountain conquests somehow all part of the same excellent mistake.

I am already planning our return, with better socks and lower expectations, which might be the same thing.