I should have known the holiday was going to be eventful when I put the postcode into my sat nav and it directed me to a field full of very unimpressed-looking cows. Turns out Pierkunowo is not, in fact, anywhere near that particular muddy paddock in Shropshire, and I had somehow managed to select the wrong country entirely. Three hours of cheerful driving later, I found myself back at the rental office in Manchester, sheepishly collecting the proper directions for Masuria, Poland. The woman behind the counter did not look surprised. I choose to believe this happens to everyone.

The actual journey to Pierkunowo was far less dramatic, though no less entertaining for my long-suffering passenger, who had packed for a walking holiday and was now deeply suspicious of my navigational abilities. We flew to Gdansk, picked up a car, and drove south through increasingly green and lake-dotted countryside. Masuria unfolded like a postcard someone had gone overboard with on the watercolours. Forests, meadows, and then suddenly the glint of water everywhere you looked. The Lake District came to mind, if the Lake District had been designed by someone who really, really liked lakes and had no concept of restraint.

We arrived at the property in late afternoon sunshine, still slightly giddy from the sat nav incident and too many service station snacks. The house sat among trees with that particular hush you only get when water is nearby. I could smell pine and something else, something warm and slightly weedy that I later learned was the lake itself breathing out in the heat. My first thought, entirely unoriginal, was that I could get used to this. My second thought, as I promptly walked into a low-hanging branch while admiring the view, was that I should probably watch where I was going.

The weather had been glorious for days, apparently. Unseasonably warm, the locals kept saying, with a particular Polish shrug that suggested they did not entirely trust this good fortune. We had planned our entire trip around walking. Proper hiking boots had been purchased. Breathable fabrics were being worn. I had even downloaded an app that identified birdsong, though I suspected I would mainly use it to pretend I knew what I was talking about.

That first evening we walked down to the lake, maybe ten minutes through woodland that smelled of warm resin and dry earth. The path was soft underfoot, not quite sand, not quite soil, something in between that spoke of countless feet before ours. The water stretched out golden in the late light, and a family of swans conducted themselves with the entitled swagger of creatures who know they own the place. We sat on a small wooden jetty and watched the sun drop, and I felt something in my chest loosen that I had not realised was tight.

The next morning we set out ambitious. A long coastal walk, the map suggested, following the shoreline for hours, cutting inland through meadows, returning triumphant and slightly sunburned. I packed water, snacks, and my phone with its smug bird app. The sky was that particular blue that makes you forget clouds were ever invented.

We made it perhaps forty minutes before the weather turned.

It did not gradually change. It simply arrived, as if someone upstairs had tipped a bucket. One moment we were admiring wildflowers and I was failing to identify a chaffinch. The next, thunder cracked directly overhead and warm rain came down with the enthusiasm of a waterfall. We scrambled for tree cover, laughing and swearing in roughly equal measure, and stood there watching our walking route dissolve into mud and memory.

The warm weather, it seemed, had been building to this. The locals probably knew. They were likely indoors, drinking tea, shaking their heads at the tourists in their breathable fabrics.

We squelched back, defeated but weirdly cheerful. The rain had that summer warmth to it, the kind that does not chill you so much as surprise you with its intensity. By the time we reached the house we were soaked through, my bird app thoroughly unconsulted, our ambitious hike reduced to a damp stroll and a story.

I stood on the porch, dripping, and watched the storm move across the lake. The water had turned grey-green and violent, completely different from the golden calm of yesterday. Somewhere out there, I supposed, those swans were dealing with their own soggy indignities. The pine trees dripped and steamed in the returning warmth. Everything smelled electric and alive.

We spent the rest of that day drying out, drinking tea with a certain smugness at having experienced the place properly, and planning shorter walks for the days ahead. The weather never quite settled back into the reliable sunshine we had expected. Each morning we would set out in promising warmth, each afternoon some form of drama would find us. A sudden downpour during a meadow crossing. Humidity so thick that a woodland path felt like a greenhouse. Once, gloriously, a hailstorm so brief and bizarre that we simply stood in it, grinning like idiots, before the sun returned to steam us dry.

I stopped checking the forecast. It felt pointless, and somehow against the spirit of the place. Masuria in warm weather is not a thing you plan precisely. It is something you walk into, literally, and respond to as it comes. The lake changes colour twelve times a day. The paths go from dusty to muddy to somewhere in between. Your bird app remains largely unused because you are too busy actually looking at birds to fumble with technology.

On our last morning I walked alone down to that jetty, early enough that the mist was still lifting off the water. The air was warm already, promising another day of unpredictable beauty. I thought about our failed epic hike, the sat nav disaster, the various weather betrayals. None of it had gone to plan. All of it had been better than the plan would have been.

I sat there until the sun cleared the trees and turned the mist to nothing. Somewhere a bird sang something I could not identify, and for once I did not reach for my phone. I just listened, and watched the water do whatever it wanted to do, and felt briefly, completely, unbothered by my own incompetence. The branch had left a small mark on my forehead. I had named it my Pierkunowo tattoo. It was already fading, but I rather wished it would not.

We left that afternoon, driving back through the green and the glinting water, already talking about when we might return. The sat nav behaved itself perfectly. I found this slightly disappointing. Some part of me had hoped for one final navigational adventure, one more wrong turn into comedy. But perhaps that is the thing about places like this. They give you what you need, not what you planned for. I needed to get gloriously lost, then slightly found again, then rained on, then warmed through. I needed to walk badly and laugh about it. I needed to sit on a wooden jetty and admit that I did not know the name of a single bird, and that this was absolutely fine.

The mist was back as we drove away, rolling off the lakes like something out of a story. I watched it in the mirror until we turned onto the main road and Masuria disappeared behind us. My walking boots were still damp in the boot. My bird app sat unopened on my phone. I had never been more satisfied with a holiday in my life.