I should have known the holiday was going to be eventful when I tried to unlock the wrong chalet and nearly gave a Polish grandmother a heart attack. There we were, my partner and I, standing on the doorstep of what I was absolutely convinced was our Zakopane Koscielisko property, jiggling keys and muttering about dodgy locks, while inside an increasingly alarmed Babcia was presumably reaching for her rolling pin. Turns out our actual place was three doors up, hidden behind a rather strategic conifer. The real owner, a chap named Tadeusz who appeared to be wearing at least four jumpers simultaneously, found this hilarious. "First time in Tatras?" he asked, wiping his eyes. "Always the same with you British. No numbers, no GPS, just... confidence."

Tadeusz became our unofficial guide for the week, though guide might be too generous a word. He was more of a commentator, appearing at random intervals with unsolicited advice and cups of something he called "mountain tea" that tasted distinctly of fermented socks. He'd inherited the property from his uncle, who'd inherited it from someone else, and so on back to what sounded like the dawn of Polish mountaineering. "My grandfather," Tadeusz announced one morning, unprompted, "he carried pianos up Giewont. For tourists. Very stupid man. Good legs though."

The neighbouring chalet was occupied by a family from Krakow who treated the mountains with the casual familiarity of people who'd been escaping there every weekend since childhood. The father, Krzysztof, was a dentist with opinions about everything. He'd corner you by the woodpile and explain, at length, why the local oscypek cheese was being ruined by EU regulations. His wife, Magda, would roll her eyes so dramatically you worried she'd strain something. "He talks," she told me, handing over a slice of said controversial cheese, "and I eat. This is our marriage." Their teenage daughter was perpetually mortified by both of them and spent most of the week attempting to photograph a specific marmot she'd named Pawel.

Down at the local shop, which sold everything from hiking boots to pickled vegetables in suspicious jars, we encountered Zofia. She must have been eighty if she was a day, and she ran the place with the iron will of someone who'd seen too many unprepared tourists come to grief. She took one look at my walking shoes, which I'd bought specifically for this trip from a shop in Manchester that definitely overcharged me, and made a sound like a disappointed kettle. "These," she said, holding up a pair of proper mountain boots, "these you need. Those?" She gestured at my footwear with what I can only describe as contempt. "Those are for garden. English garden, maybe, with tea." I bought the boots. She was right, of course. My Manchester shoes lasted approximately one muddy trail before the sole started making a break for freedom.

What struck me, wandering between these encounters, was how the place ran on conversation. Not the performative chat of a London pub, where everyone's networking or escaping, but something slower and more persistent. Tadeusz would appear with his terrible tea and simply stay, talking about nothing in particular until the light changed. Krzysztof needed you to understand about cheese regulations. Zofia needed you properly shod. Even Pawel the marmot, I suspect, was being discussed somewhere with genuine concern for his wellbeing.

I came expecting mountains, which I got, spectacularly. But I hadn't expected to feel so obviously, almost embarrassingly, looked after by strangers who found my incompetence more amusing than annoying. There's something humbling about being the person who tries the wrong door, buys the wrong shoes, can't pronounce the place name properly. The Tatra mountains don't care about your competence. The people, bless them, seem to find it rather endearing.