I have never been very good at reading maps, which is a charitable way of saying I am absolutely hopeless at them. This became embarrassingly clear about ten minutes after my partner handed me the directions to our holiday let in Orta San Giulio, a tiny jewel of a village perched on the shores of Lake Orta in northern Italy.

We had flown into Milan Malpanca and hired a car, which felt terribly sophisticated until I took the wrong exit somewhere near Novara and found myself navigating through what appeared to be an industrial estate dedicated entirely to bathroom fittings. My partner, who had been dozing, woke to find me doing a three-point turn in a tile warehouse car park while an elderly gentleman in a Fiat Panda watched with the sort of patient disappointment usually reserved for small children who have dropped their ice cream.

"Just follow the lake," my partner suggested, in that tone people use when they are trying very hard not to say something unkind.

This proved excellent advice. Lake Orta revealed itself gradually, first as a glimmer between hills, then as a proper stretch of water with the absurdly picturesque Isola San Giulio floating in the middle like something a film director would reject as too obviously beautiful. The village itself clings to the shoreline in a jumble of pastel buildings and narrow lanes, and our apartment sat right in the thick of it, up a flight of stone steps that I would come to know intimately over the following week.

The property was one of those Italian holiday lets that looks modest from the outside and then opens into something rather special. Terracotta floors, wooden shutters, and a balcony that practically demanded aperitivo hour with a bottle of local Gattinara. I stood there feeling terribly pleased with myself, already mentally composing the social media post, when I noticed the weather had turned.

This was late May, which I had assumed meant reliable sunshine. The locals clearly knew better. Within an hour of our arrival, the sky had lowered itself over the lake like a grey wool blanket, and the temperature dropped ten degrees. My carefully planned itinerary of languid lakeside lounging evaporated before my eyes.

"We'll walk," my partner announced, pulling out a guidebook with the enthusiasm of someone who had actually read it beforehand.

So began our accidental discovery of Orta San Giulio's walking possibilities. The village itself is a network of cobbled lanes and sudden staircases that turn a simple stroll to the shops into something resembling a StairMaster session. We climbed past the Basilica di San Giulio, where the twelfth-century frescoes provided an excellent excuse to catch our breath, and found the path that winds along the lakeshore toward Pella.

The weather remained stubbornly changeable. One moment we would be stripping off layers in unexpected sunshine, the next scrambling for waterproofs as drizzle swept across the water. It became a running joke, this meteorological indecision. We would pause at some viewpoint, declare it perfect walking weather, and immediately be proved comprehensively wrong.

On our third day, we attempted the walk to Sacro Monte, the UNESCO-listed sacred mountain above the village. The path climbs through woodland past twenty chapels dedicated to Saint Francis, each one a little baroque theatre of painted statues. We had started in bright sunshine, but by the fifth chapel the clouds had gathered with theatrical menace. Rain began as we reached the top, proper Italian rain that bounces off stone and finds every gap in inadequate waterproofing.

We sheltered in the sanctuary church, dripping onto ancient flagstones, and I found myself unexpectedly moved by the whole ridiculous situation. There we were, slightly lost, definitely damp, surrounded by centuries of devotional art in a place I had never heard of six months before. My carefully planned holiday of elegant lakeside living had become something messier and more interesting.

The rain passed, as Italian rain does, with dramatic suddenness. We walked back down through woods that smelled of wet earth and wild garlic, the lake appearing and disappearing between trees. That evening, we ate risotto with perch from the lake at a restaurant where the waiter seemed genuinely impressed by our walking efforts, or perhaps just amused by our still-damp appearance.

By week's end, I had abandoned any pretence of meteorological planning. We walked when it looked pleasant, walked when it looked threatening, and occasionally walked in conditions that would have kept us firmly indoors back in Manchester. The changeable weather had forced a slower pace, more attention to the moment, more conversations with fellow walkers sheltering in the same chapel doorway.

On our final morning, I stood on that balcony with a coffee and watched mist roll across the lake, obscuring the island entirely. Somewhere below, church bells were ringing. I thought about my map-reading failure, our industrial estate detour, the various times weather had altered our plans. The holiday had been nothing like I expected, and I was genuinely grateful for that.