I have never been so pleased to see a dry stone wall in my life. After sixteen hours of planes, trains, and a hire car that smelled faintly of parmesan and regret, I finally found the turning for Taviano. The sat nav had given up three miles back, and I had spent the previous twenty minutes driving past olive groves convinced I was either in the right place or about to interrupt someone's private lunch.

The mishap came at the final gate. I had been warned about the key safe code, but not about the low-hanging branch that absolutely clobbered me as I leaned out to check the number. There I was, one foot in a hire car still running, one hand clutching my forehead, muttering apologies to a tree. A neighbour's dog barked what I can only assume was laughter. Welcome to Puglia.

The property itself sits just outside the village proper, a low white building with the characteristic flat roof and those marvellous green shutters that make every photograph look like a film set. I pushed open the door still rubbing my temple and promptly forgot the indignity. The cool of the interior hit me first, thick stone walls doing what they have done for centuries. Then the smell of jasmine from the courtyard, drifting through an open window. I stood in the hallway like a complete lemon, rucksack half-slung, just breathing.

I had arrived with grand walking plans. The coastal path from Torre San Giovanni toward Torre Mozza was supposed to be my opening adventure, a gentle seven kilometres with swimming stops. The weather that first morning was already pressing, that particular Puglian heat that builds from dawn and sits heavy by ten. I set off anyway, stubborn and English, water bottle clutched like a talisman.

The path starts properly at the marina, past fishermen mending nets with the unhurried movements of people who know the sea's timetable better than any clock. I walked perhaps two kilometres before the temperature climbed past anything sensible. The limestone glittered, the cicadas screamed, and I found myself doing that ridiculous holiday march, too fast for pleasure, too slow for actual progress. A local woman passed on a scooter, looked at my red face, and shook her head with the gentle pity of someone who has watched countless northern Europeans underestimate July.

I turned back. There is a particular humility in abandoning a walk because the sun has defeated you, and I felt it fully, trudging to the nearest cafe for a granita that I finished in approximately ninety seconds. The lemon stained my fingers for hours. I did not care.

The afternoon became about adaptation. I discovered the shaded courtyard at the property, where a small table sits beneath a pergola thick with vines. I read there, dozed, watched a lizard perform endless push-ups on the warm wall. When the heat finally broke around six, I walked the village instead, narrow streets where the buildings lean together like old friends sharing secrets. The church bell rang for something, probably nothing, and people appeared from doorways as if summoned.

That became the pattern. Early walks, always coastal, always finished by nine. The stretch toward Lido Marini, where the dunes hold wild rosemary that scents your legs as you pass. Evenings in Taviano itself, when the piazza fills and the temperature drops to merely enthusiastic rather than oppressive. I learned to read the sky, to set out when the light was still golden and angled, to carry twice the water I thought necessary and still want more at the end.

The branch had left a small mark on my forehead. I noticed it in the bathroom mirror on day three and laughed, properly, for the first time in months. Some arrivals bruise you slightly. Some places wait for you to slow down before they let you in.