I should have known the sat nav was up to no good when it tried to send me through what looked suspiciously like someone's beetroot field. Three hours out of Warsaw, already sweating through my supposedly breathable walking trousers, and there I was bumping along a track that grew narrower and more apologetic with every metre. The hire car's suspension made a noise like a disappointed sigh. I pressed on, because that is what British people do when clearly lost: we double down.

The truth emerged ten minutes later when a man on a tractor looked at me with the particular pity reserved for foreigners in hire cars. I had missed the proper turning by roughly half a mile, seduced by what I can only describe as a very convincing dirt road. The proper route, it turned out, was paved, signposted, and entirely unmissable to anyone not daydreaming about pierogi. I reversed with what dignity I could muster, which was none, and found Kruklanki proper twenty minutes after that.

The house sat back from Lake Kruklin, timber-framed and quietly smug about its view. I had planned this walking holiday with military precision: coastal trails, dawn hikes, the full Lake District experience transplanted to Polish lakeland. The weather, naturally, had other ideas. The first morning arrived hot and still, the kind of warmth that makes walking feel less like exercise and more like a personal endurance challenge staged by a cruel deity. I set off anyway, because I had packed three pairs of walking socks and intended to use them.

The trail along the lake shore started promisingly enough. Pine forest giving way to reedy inlets, the occasional kayak drifting past like a waterborne tourist. I made it forty minutes before the heat properly announced itself. My water bottle, optimistically sized for an English moorland stroll, surrendered its contents with depressing speed. I found myself standing on a small wooden jetty, watching a family swim with the relaxed competence of people who had never considered walking anywhere when they could simply float instead. The father waved. I waved back, trying to look like someone who had definitely planned to stop here, not someone whose face had gone an alarming shade of puce.

That afternoon I retreated to the house and its terrace, where I sat with a cold beer and reconsidered my entire approach. The weather was not going to accommodate my romantic vision of striding through misty landscapes in a proper walking jacket. It was going to be hot, consistently and unapologetically hot, for the foreseeable future. I could fight this, and lose, or I could adapt. I am not naturally good at adaptation. I am good at packing inappropriate clothing and complaining. But there, with the lake shimmering and a light breeze finally arriving, something shifted.

The next days became something looser, better. Early walks before the heat built, sticking to shaded forest paths rather than exposed shoreline. Longer rests, swimming when the opportunity presented itself, which it frequently did. I discovered that walking in sandals, something I would have dismissed as morally wrong back home, was entirely practical when the trail turned sandy near the water's edge. I stopped trying to make this holiday into something it wasn't, and started noticing what it actually was.

On my final morning I walked slowly along the coast as the sun rose, already warm, already promising another day of proper summer. A heron lifted from the reeds. Somewhere a dog barked, then stopped. I had not covered the distances I planned, not worn half the kit I brought, not once needed my waterproof trousers. And I felt, for the first time in ages, genuinely rested, which no amount of marching up hills has ever quite managed.