I have never been so grateful for a sat nav with a sense of humour, if you can call repeatedly telling me to "turn around where possible" humorous. My journey to Sovramonte in Veneto began with the kind of misplaced confidence that only someone who once got lost in their own garden shed can truly understand. I had decided, in my infinite wisdom, to take the scenic route from Venice Marco Polo airport. Three hours later, I was definitely seeing scenery. Repeatedly. The same roundabout, four times.

The mishap, though, the one that still makes me wince and laugh in equal measure, happened when I finally spotted what I thought was the property entrance. I swung the hire car down a gravel track with the enthusiasm of a man who had spent the last forty minutes arguing with an Italian farmer about whether this road actually led anywhere. It did not lead to Sovramonte. It led to someone's very private olive grove, and within seconds I was surrounded by goats who looked deeply unimpressed by my intrusion. The farmer, it turned out, was the same one from earlier. We recognised each other. There was a moment of profound mutual understanding, mostly about my terrible sense of direction, before he pointed me back toward the actual village with a gesture that managed to be both kind and deeply pitying.

When I finally found the right turning, the proper entrance, I sat in the car for a full minute just letting the quiet settle. Sovramonte sits in the province of Belluno, in the foothills of the Dolomites, and the first thing that struck me was how the air itself seemed different. Thinner, perhaps, or simply carrying less of the weight I had brought with me from London. The property was a traditional stone house, nothing flashy, nothing trying too hard, with wooden shutters that had faded to that particular silvery grey you only get from decades of proper mountain weather.

I dumped my bags with the chaotic energy of a man who had promised himself he would hike that very afternoon. The weather, when I had checked that morning in a Premier Inn near Gatwick, had promised twenty-six degrees and unbroken sunshine. The weather, as I stood there in my inadequate trainers, was delivering something closer to thirty with a humidity that made my shirt cling in ways I did not appreciate. Still, I was determined. I had researched walks along the nearby Piave river, gentle trails through woodland that would lead me toward the Prealps without demanding actual mountaineering credentials.

I made it approximately forty minutes before admitting defeat. The path was beautiful, dappled light through chestnut trees, the sound of water somewhere below, but I had underestimated how the Veneto heat builds in August, how it sits in the valleys and refuses to shift. I found myself stopped on a wooden bridge, drinking warm water from a bottle I should have frozen, watching a family of Italian day-trippers stride past in proper hiking boots with the easy confidence of people who understood that "scenic walk" and "sauna" were not synonyms.

That evening, back at the property, I sat on the terrace with a Spritz that I had earned through sheer stubbornness if nothing else. The sun dropped behind the mountains and the temperature finally became reasonable, became glorious even. I watched the light change across the valley and thought about how often I approach holidays with a list rather than a sense of what might actually suit the place, the moment, the weather as it actually exists rather than as I imagined it from a rainy British living room.

The next morning I woke early, properly early, and walked the same route in the cool hours before nine. It was transformative. The same path, the same river, but now it felt like discovery rather than endurance. I stopped at a viewpoint where the valley opened up and could see why people fall in love with this corner of Veneto, why they return. Not for the dramatic peaks further north, though those have their place, but for this gentler landscape of woodland and water, of small villages where nobody is in a particular hurry.

I spent my remaining days adjusting to the rhythm of the place. Morning walks, sometimes along the river, sometimes just exploring the lanes around Sovramonte itself, returning before the heat became oppressive. Afternoons reading in the shade of the property's garden, occasionally dozing, occasionally watching lizards dart across the warm stone. Evenings back out as the temperature dropped, finding local trattorias where the food was simple and the wine was local and nobody minded if I sat for hours.

The weather, that first day of misjudged ambition, taught me something I keep trying to remember. That plans are suggestions, that the best moments often come from adaptation rather than determination, that sometimes you need to sit with a goat-related humiliation and a warm bottle of water before you figure out how a place actually works. I left Sovramonte with legs that had finally found their walking rhythm, with a farmer's wave that felt like proper approval, and with the certain knowledge that I would return, earlier in the day, better prepared, and with absolutely no confidence in my own navigation whatsoever.