I have never been so grateful for a pair of wellies in all my life, and that includes the time I wore them to a wedding in the Lake District. The journey to our little place in Karlshamn had been going so well. We'd caught the early ferry from Karlskrona, stopped for a cinnamon bun that was roughly the size of my face, and even managed to navigate the Swedish road signs without once confusing a roundabout for a motorway. Then, about ten minutes from the cottage, I spotted what I thought was a shortcut through a field. Reader, it was not a shortcut. It was a bog. Within seconds my left trainer had made a sound like a walrus escaping a mud bath, and I spent the final leg of the trip squelching dramatically while my partner tried not to laugh. She failed.

The cottage itself sits in Guevik, just outside Karlshamn, and arriving there with one sodden foot somehow made the whole thing feel more like an adventure than a holiday rental. It is the sort of place that looks like it has been waiting for you. Red wooden walls, a proper porch for sitting with a cup of tea, and that particular silence you only get when there are more trees than people. I abandoned my ruined trainer by the door like a warning to future travellers and immediately went to inspect the coastline path that runs practically from the garden.

Blekinge in summer is made for walking. The archipelago coast here is all smooth granite slabs and little inlets where the water turns milky green in the shallows. We had planned, perhaps ambitiously, to walk the coastal trail all the way towards Karlshamn harbour that first afternoon. The sky was a blameless blue when we set out. I was in borrowed sandals, still slightly damp of spirit, and we packed a picnic that involved an irresponsible quantity of herring.

The thing about Swedish summer weather, we discovered, is that it likes to keep you guessing. Within an hour the breeze had stiffened considerably. By the time we reached a rocky outcrop perfect for our lunch, the sky had organised itself into something distinctly grey and purposeful. We ate quickly, watching a fishing boat make heavy weather of the channel, and decided to press on rather than retreat. This was, in retrospect, classic holiday optimism. The first drops arrived as we were navigating a particularly exposed stretch of heathland, and within ten minutes we were in what I can only describe as a proper downpour. The kind that finds its way into supposedly waterproof jackets and makes you question every life choice that led to this moment.

We sheltered under a wind-twisted pine and waited it out, which took forty minutes and most of our remaining dignity. The storm passed as quickly as it had arrived, leaving everything smelling of warmed stone and pine resin, and we trudged back to the cottage considerably earlier than planned. I spent the evening in dry socks on that porch, watching the light fade across the inlet, and felt something shift in me. There is a particular pleasure in being thwarted by weather and deciding not to mind. The walk had been shortened, yes, but the world felt very present and very immediate. No photographs of us looking windswept and heroic will ever see the light of day, and that feels exactly right.

The next morning we tried again, better prepared, and the coast gave us one of those walks where you keep stopping because the view has changed slightly and somehow demands attention. But it was that first afternoon, damp and ridiculous, that I will remember most clearly.