I had been dreaming of a sunny coastal walk along the Slovenian Riviera for weeks, so naturally I spent the first hour of my holiday sat in a layby just outside Trieste, arguing with a sat nav that insisted Portoroz Parecag was somewhere in the Adriatic Sea. My travelling companion, who had confidently claimed she could navigate using "instinct and the position of the sun," eventually admitted she had been holding the map upside down since Venice. We laughed until we cried, though I suspect some of those tears were genuine frustration.

When we finally rolled up to the property, perched on the hillside between Portoroz and Parecag, the late afternoon heat hit us like opening an oven door. I had packed for "brisk coastal hiking," which in my imagination meant misty mornings and a sensible fleece. Instead, I stood there in a woolly jumper, watching locals stroll past in sandals and linen, looking at me with the sort of pity usually reserved for lost livestock.

The apartment itself was a relief after our navigational ordeal. A simple, clean place with a balcony that looked down through pine trees towards the Gulf of Trieste. I dumped my entirely inappropriate luggage and immediately changed into the one pair of shorts I had optimistically thrown in. We were here to walk, after all, and the weather was clearly not going to accommodate my fantasy of rugged, windswept trekking.

That first evening, we set out towards the Secovlje salt pans, thinking we would manage a quick stroll before dinner. The flat paths through the nature reserve seemed manageable enough, but the humidity had other ideas. Within twenty minutes, I had developed a sheen that could only be described as "freshly glazed ham." My companion, who had sensibly worn a hat, looked on with amusement as I tried to fan myself with a leaflet about brine shrimp. We turned back early, defeated by the warmth, and consoled ourselves with a swim at Portoroz beach as the sun dipped low. The water was that perfect Adriatic temperature where you can wade in without the customary British gasp and retreat.

The following morning, I woke before dawn determined to beat the heat. This, I told myself, was proper walking weather. I set off along the Parenzana trail, the old railway line that winds through the countryside between Portoroz and the Croatian border. The path was gentle, shaded in parts by oak and fig trees, and for perhaps an hour I felt like the seasoned hiker I had always pretended to be. Then the sun cleared the hills, and suddenly I was walking through a landscape that felt increasingly like a terracotta tile. I passed an elderly local man tending vines who looked at me, looked at my water bottle, and wordlessly handed me a fig from his basket. It was the sweetest thing I have ever eaten, and also perhaps a gentle hint that I was visibly struggling.

By mid-morning, I had retreated to a small cafe in Piran, the peninsula town just along the coast. Sat there with a cold refosk and my feet in the shade, I had one of those moments of clarity that holidays sometimes grant. I had come here with a rigid idea of what constituted "proper" adventure, as if enjoyment required some element of suffering or at least technical difficulty. The weather had simply refused to cooperate with this narrative. And rather than adapting gracefully, I had spent two days fighting it, marching out in fleece and stubbornness, returning red-faced and slightly ridiculous.

The rest of the week, I walked differently. Early mornings along the coastal path to Strunjan, where the cliffs drop dramatically to hidden coves. Evening ambles through the olive groves above Parecag, when the light turns golden and the heat softens to something almost affectionate. I swam more than I hiked, ate fish that had been swimming that morning, and stopped treating the warm weather as an obstacle to overcome.

On our final day, we walked the salt pans again, this time at dawn, when the evaporation ponds mirror the sky in pink and silver. I wore my shorts without embarrassment, carried two water bottles like a sensible person, and accepted that sometimes the best adventures are the ones that do not go to plan. We had come for rugged coastal trekking and found something gentler, more Mediterranean, more forgiving. I left with a tan, several jars of local salt, and the lingering suspicion that the man with the figs had understood something I was only just learning.