I have never been so happy to see a sign for a village I cannot pronounce. After three hours of driving from Olbia airport, my hire car wheezing up yet another corkscrew hill, I spotted "Costa Paradiso" and actually cheered out loud. Then promptly missed the turning because I was still cheering. Cue a ten-minute detour through goat territory and some very judgmental looks from actual goats.

The mishap that really set the tone, though, happened five minutes after I finally found the right road. I pulled over to take a photo of the view, stepped out of the car, and my sunglasses, which I had stupidly perched on my head, slid straight down my face, bounced off the bonnet, and vanished into a thicket of spiky maquis shrub. I spent twenty minutes rooting around like a truffle pig, emerged with scratched arms and one lens, and decided this was clearly Sardinia's way of telling me to live in the moment. The one-lens look is very in, I told myself. Pirate chic.

The property itself sits in that glorious hodgepodge of Costa Paradiso, where the buildings cascade down hillsides in a way that feels almost accidental, like someone spilled a bag of terracotta dice. My apartment had a terrace that looked directly out to sea, and I mean directly. I could have thrown a pebble and hit a cormorant, though I did not because I am not a monster and also my throwing arm is dreadful.

I had arrived with grand hiking plans, naturally. The Costa Paradiso coastline is riddled with sentieri, little paths that snake down to coves with names I mangled enthusiastically. My first morning, I set off for Li Cossi beach full of beans, proper walking boots on, rucksack packed with what I considered sensible provisions. Two litres of water, some pecorino, a map I had photographed on my phone because paper maps are for people who plan properly.

The Sardinian sun had other ideas. By ten in the morning it was already flexing its muscles, that particular Mediterranean intensity that makes you feel like an ant under a magnifying glass. I made it perhaps forty minutes along the coastal path before admitting defeat, finding a rock in the shade of a juniper bush, and eating my entire cheese ration in what can only be described as a stress picnic. The walk back was slower, more philosophical, and significantly sweatier. I passed an elderly local chap in sandals and a string vest who looked at my boots, my red face, my general aura of northern European hubris, and simply nodded. He knew. He had seen my kind before.

The weather became my unplanned itinerary. I learned to walk early, before the sun properly woke up, when the granite still held the night's cool and the sea mist lingered in the valleys. Those morning walks were extraordinary. The path to Tinnari, winding through heather and wild fennel, with the light coming up pink and gold over the water. I would reach a viewpoint and just stand there, slightly out of breath, watching fishing boats putter out from Isola Rossa way below.

By midday, the heat drove me back to the apartment or down to the nearest cove, where I perfected the art of doing absolutely nothing in waist-deep water. Afternoons were for reading on the terrace, for siestas I never planned but always took, for watching the light change on the rocks until it became bearable to move again.

Evening walks became my favourite. The sun dropping, the temperature merciful, the coast path almost empty. I would walk until my legs felt properly used, until the sky went that particular violet that seems to happen only in southern places, and then turn back with the satisfaction of someone who had finally, belatedly, got the rhythm right.

On my last evening, I found my broken sunglasses in the maquis. The goats had not eaten them, which felt like a small victory. I left them on the terrace railing, a one-eyed monument to my own silliness, and watched the sun go down with a glass of Vermentino that cost embarrassingly little.

Sardinia had taught me to walk slower, to rise earlier, to accept that some plans are improved by being abandoned. I went home with better calves, a worse sunglasses collection, and the certain knowledge that I would mispronounce "Costa Paradiso" with confidence for the rest of my days.