I have never been very good at reading maps, which is how I ended up driving our hire car halfway up a goat track above Lake Ledro before realising the sat nav had quietly given up on me entirely. My partner sat in the passenger seat, gripping the door handle with that particular expression that says "I am being very patient and will definitely mention this later over a spritz." We were meant to be at our holiday property, a traditional Ledro-style place near the water, not negotiating with an angry-looking sheep who had claimed the narrow path as his own.

The proper road, when we finally found it, wound down through sweet-smelling larch woods and opened suddenly onto that extraordinary blue. Lake Ledro is the sort of watercolour blue that makes you suspect Instagram filters have somehow leaked into real life. Our property sat just back from the shore, wooden balconies dripping with geraniums, the whole place smelling of warm pine and something baking next door. I stood in the gravel driveway with my ridiculous oversized rucksack still strapped on, feeling like a very sweaty tortoise who had finally reached the lettuce patch.

We had planned this trip around walking, you see. Proper striding-out walks, the kind that require decent boots and a smug sense of virtuous exhaustion. The weather forecast had promised twenty-something degrees and clear skies, perfect for tackling the lakeside path that circles Ledro's northern shore. I had packed accordingly: walking trousers with zips that turn them into shorts, two types of insect repellent, and a hat with a proper neck flap. I was ready to be Serious About Hiking.

The first morning delivered exactly what we wanted. We set off early, before the heat built, following the Sentiero di Ledro where it hugs the water's edge. The path dips in and out of little bays, past fishermen standing patient as herons, through patches of wild mint that release their smell when you brush past. We walked perhaps six miles, stopping at a tiny beach near Mezzolago where the water was so clear you could watch fish negotiating around your ankles. I felt tremendously pleased with myself. This was the plan working perfectly.

By afternoon, though, the sky had begun doing something theatrical. Clouds piled up behind the mountains with theatrical speed, and the temperature climbed past thirty degrees with a humidity that felt personally vindictive. Our serious walking plan rather collapsed. We retreated to our property's balcony, where I sat in my expensive walking trousers feeling faintly ridiculous, watching lightning flicker over the peaks beyond the lake.

The weather stayed changeable for days. Mornings would dawn perfect and cool, ideal for hiking, but by noon the atmosphere would turn heavy and unpredictable. We adapted, as one must. We became experts at the early start, the swift return, the afternoon surrender. One morning we managed the full stretch to Pur before the heat built, rewarded with wild strawberries growing among the rocks. Another day we set out confidently after lunch and got properly drenched in a sudden downpour near Bezzecca, sheltering under a pine tree like the world's most unprepared mammals.

There is something slightly humbling about planning a walking holiday and spending quite so much time sitting on your own balcony, watching weather happen to mountains. I had wanted to be the sort of person who strides through conditions regardless, who has appropriate Gore-Tex for every eventuality. Instead I became someone who naps through afternoon thunderstorms and considers a stroll to the bakery a legitimate expedition if the humidity is above seventy percent.

Yet I think I preferred it, honestly. The walks we did manage felt stolen, precious, squeezed into the generous mornings before the atmosphere turned. We learned the lake's different moods: flat and silver at dawn, that impossible blue by mid-morning, green and restless when storms approached. We walked to Molina di Ledro one cool evening, after rain had cleared the air, and found the water so still that the mountains sat perfectly doubled upon its surface.

Our property became the centre of things more than I expected. I had thought of it merely as base camp for grander adventures, but there was genuine pleasure in returning from a shortened walk, in accepting the weather's terms rather than fighting them. The balcony became my observation post, my reading nook, my breakfast spot. I watched swallows darting over the water at dusk, and once a whole family of ducks parading past in strict formation, as if late for an appointment.

On our final morning, the weather broke properly. I woke to proper mountain chill, the kind that makes you reach for a jumper, and clear air that seemed to have been scrubbed clean overnight. We walked hard that day, covering more miles than any other, pushing right round to the far end of the lake where the river begins its journey downward. My legs ached satisfyingly. I felt I had earned something, though I am not entirely sure what.

Driving away, back past those larch woods and down toward the motorway, I thought about how poorly I had stuck to my original plan. The goat track mishap had been merely the first of several navigational failures, most of them internal. I had aimed for one kind of holiday and received quite another. The walking had been patchy, interrupted, often abandoned. And yet I could not remember a trip where I had noticed so much: the particular green of lake water over stones, the way storms announced themselves hours in advance with a certain stillness, the exact moment each morning when shade became insufficient against the building heat.

I am still not very good at reading maps, or apparently at weather forecasts, or at accepting that plans are really just suggestions dressed up with bullet points. But I am getting better at balconies, at patience, at the particular pleasure of a walk cut short by circumstance and surrendered to gracefully. We will return, I think, to that Ledro property, to those geraniums and that pine smell and the lake's endless colour-shifting. Next time I might even leave the neck-flap hat at home. Some compromises are worth making.