I should have known the sat nav was up to no good when it tried to send me through what looked like someone's beetroot field. Three hours out of Gdansk, my hire car and I were having a frank exchange of views about the quickest route to Koscierzyna, and frankly, the beetroots were winning.

The mishap came just outside Kartuzy, where I spotted what I thought was a shortcut. It was not a shortcut. It was a farm track, currently occupied by a very large pig who had no intention of moving for a man in a Vauxhall Corsa. I sat there for a good ten minutes, windows down, negotiating in my best GCSE Polish, which the pig found about as convincing as I did. Eventually a farmer wandered over, laughed at me for a solid minute, and guided me back to the proper road. I arrived at the holiday home half an hour later than planned, slightly muddy, smelling of pig-adjacent panic, and in desperate need of a cup of tea.

The property itself made up for everything. A proper Kashubian wooden house, all honey-coloured timber and a steep pitched roof, set in a garden that looked like it had been arranged by someone with very strong opinions about hydrangeas. I dumped my bags, made that tea, and stood on the little terrace watching the late afternoon sun filter through the pine trees. The pig incident already felt like it had happened to someone else, probably someone more competent.

My plan had been ambitious. I had printed off walking routes, you see. Multiple walking routes. I was going to march along the Radunia river, tackle the trails around Lake Ostrzyckie, perhaps stride manfully through the Wdzydze Landscape Park with a packed lunch and the wind in my hair. Kashubia in summer, I had read, was a walker's paradise. Rolling hills, glacial lakes, forests thick with the smell of pine and possibility. I had proper boots and everything.

The weather, however, had not read my itinerary.

I woke the next morning to what I can only describe as aggressive sunshine. The kind of warmth that makes you check whether you've accidentally woken up in southern Spain. By ten o'clock it was twenty-eight degrees and climbing, and my ambitious twelve-mile loop suddenly seemed like the sort of idea dreamed up by someone who had never actually met the sun.

I adapted. This is, I told myself, what proper travellers do. I swapped the long-distance yomps for gentle morning strolls along the riverbank before the heat built up, watching dragonflies hover over the water and local fishermen pretending not to notice the obvious tourist. The Radunia moves slowly there, brown and unhurried, and I found myself matching its pace without really meaning to. There is something deeply Kashubian about that unhurriedness, I think. Even the ducks seemed to be taking their time.

By midday I was retreating to the garden with a book, finding patches of shade that moved progressively across the lawn like a slow clock. The house stayed surprisingly cool inside, those thick wooden walls doing their job, and I developed a small routine of cold kompot and afternoon dozing that felt less like laziness and more like cultural immersion.

The evenings were when I managed my proper walking. As the temperature dropped, I'd head out again, exploring the lanes around Koscierzyna town itself, past houses with the distinctive Kashubian decorative woodwork, the patterns almost like embroidery in timber. I found a small park with a bandstand where teenagers were doing something complicated with skateboards, and a bakery where I managed to buy bread through a combination of pointing and apologetic smiling.

There was a moment on my third evening, walking back as the light turned golden and the pine scent intensified with the cooling air, when I caught myself thinking about the pig. Not with embarrassment, exactly, but with something like affection. For the willingness to get it wrong, to take the track that looked promising and deal with the consequences. My walking plans had gone similarly sideways, transformed by heat into something slower and smaller, and I was unexpectedly glad of it. The best holidays, I suspect, are the ones where you end up doing something slightly different from what you wrote in your notebook.

On my final morning I attempted one last early walk, setting off at six when the mist still hung over the fields. I got deliberately lost on a forest path, found my way back by following the sound of church bells, and returned to find the garden cat had claimed my outdoor chair in my absence. We negotiated a timeshare arrangement. I drank my tea. The day warmed up again, and I let it.