I have never been brilliant with directions, so it was hardly a surprise that I missed the turning for our villa not once but three times. The hire car sat nav had apparently given up on me, and by the time I finally spotted the little white gate tucked between two hibiscus bushes, I was sweating through my t-shirt and muttering apologies to a very patient passenger. We had flown into Malaga that morning, full of airport coffee and optimism, and the forty-minute drive along the coast had been glorious until I decided I knew better than Google. Spoiler: I did not.

The villa itself was one of those low-slung whitewashed numbers that seem to glow in the Andalusian afternoon. Terracotta pots everywhere, a lemon tree dropping fruit onto the patio with casual indifference, and a pool that looked so inviting I nearly walked straight into it with my shoes still on. First impressions? I wanted to move in permanently and become the sort of person who drinks tinto de verano at eleven in the morning without a trace of guilt.

We dumped our cases and did what any sensible Brit would do after months of drizzle: flung open every door and window and stood very still, letting the warm air wash over us like a proper welcome. The place smelled of jasmine and distant charcoal from somebody's barbecue. I could hear the sea, or thought I could, though later I realised it was probably just the breeze through the pines. Romantic either way.

Our plan, hatched during a rainy Tuesday in February back home, had been gloriously ambitious. We would walk the entire coastline, from our base in Mijas Costa down towards Fuengirola and beyond, marching along cliff paths like seasoned explorers, returning each evening with sun-kissed cheeks and tales of adventure. I had even bought proper walking sandals, the ones with the thick soles that serious people wear. I was going to get my money's worth.

The first morning dawned cloudless and already warm at eight. We set off down a dusty track towards the shore, passing villas hidden behind bougainvillea walls and the occasional sleepy dog who couldn't be bothered to bark at us. The path narrowed as we reached the clifftops, and suddenly there it was: the Mediterranean stretching out like someone had spilled blue paint, with Africa somewhere hazy on the horizon if you squinted and believed hard enough. I felt tremendously pleased with myself. This was living. This was why we had come.

By ten o'clock I had drunk both our water bottles and was developing a worrying stripe of pink across my shoulders. The walking sandals, it turned out, had a design flaw involving a strap that rubbed in precisely the wrong place. My companion, who has the good sense to check weather apps while I charge blindly ahead, pointed out that the temperature was already pushing thirty-two degrees. The afternoon forecast said thirty-six. I squinted at the path ahead, which shimmered and offered no shade whatsoever, and had one of those quiet moments of reckoning that holidays sometimes bring.

I am not, I admitted to myself, a seasoned explorer. I am a person who once got lost in a Sainsbury's car park. The coastline would still be there tomorrow, and the day after, and probably next year. What was the point of forcing a march in heat that felt like opening an oven door? We turned back, me limping slightly and trying to look as though this had been the plan all along.

That afternoon we did something I would never have planned but now cannot imagine skipping. We walked instead to the little mercado in the nearby village, moving slowly through patches of shade like lizards on a wall, buying peaches and bread and cheese that smelled properly of sheep. We took a different path home through orange groves where the fruit hung green and heavy, and stopped whenever we felt like it. The heat had humbled me, and I was grateful for it.

The rest of the week became a rhythm of early starts and careful wandering. We found a coastal path that ran through pine woods where the shade made walking possible until nearly noon, emerging now and then to glimpse the sea far below. We discovered a cove where the water was cold enough to make you gasp, reached by a steep trail that demanded proper concentration and rewarded you with silence broken only by cicadas. My sandals went into the bottom of the suitcase and stayed there. I bought a wide-brimmed hat from a man who laughed when I asked if he had anything "less Indiana Jones," and wore it without a shred of dignity.

Each evening we sat on that terrace with our tinto de verno, watching the light fade from gold to rose to something deeper, and I thought about how often I confuse stubbornness with adventure. The heat had forced a change I needed, a slowing down, a paying attention. I noticed things I would have marched straight past: the way the light hit the white walls at certain hours, the old woman hanging washing with movements so practised they looked like dance, the particular smell of rosemary crushed underfoot on a dry path.

On our last morning I woke before six and walked alone down to a viewpoint I had found earlier in the week. The air was cool enough to need a light jumper, and the sea lay flat and silver in the early light. No grand distance covered, no epic achievement unlocked. Just me and a hat that made me look ridiculous and a landscape that asked nothing of me except presence.

I stood there until the sun cleared the hills and the day began to warm, then turned back towards the villa and breakfast. The path was dusty and familiar now, and I walked it slowly, already planning when we might return.