I have always believed that the best holidays begin with a small disaster, and our trip to Simrishamn did not disappoint. We had been driving through Skane for the better part of three hours, the Swedish countryside rolling past in that impossibly green, orderly way that makes you feel slightly inadequate about your own garden back in Leeds. My partner was navigating, I was driving, and somewhere just outside of Ystad we realised that one of us had packed walking boots for a coastal hiking holiday while the other had packed a pair of canvas plimsolls and a misplaced sense of optimism. I shall leave you to guess which of us was which.

The property itself sat on the edge of Simrishamn like a well-kept secret, a traditional Skane cottage with weathered wooden cladding and windows that seemed to wink at you in the afternoon light. We had chosen it partly for the location, partly for the promise of proper Swedish simplicity, and partly because the photographs showed a garden path that led directly toward the coast. What the photographs did not show was the rather enthusiastic gravel driveway that announced our arrival with a crunch so theatrical that every seabird in the county must have known we were coming.

I stepped out of the car with the particular swagger of someone who has just spent several hours in a Renault Clio and immediately felt the Skane sun on my face. It was warm, unexpectedly so, the kind of warmth that makes you foolishly believe you will not need a jumper for the entire fortnight. Within the hour I had committed to this fantasy entirely, changing into shorts and applying sunscreen with the reckless enthusiasm of a man who has forgotten what Scandinavian UV can do to English skin.

We decided to walk before unpacking, which tells you everything about our priorities and nothing about our common sense. The coastal path from Simrishamn runs eastward along cliffs and through meadows that smell of wild thyme and salt, and we set off with water bottles, a borrowed map, and my partner's wholly inappropriate footwear. The first mile was glorious. The Baltic glittered to our left, fishing boats bobbed in the distance, and I found myself delivering a small lecture about the importance of immersion in nature, about how walking clears the mind, about how we really ought to do this more often back home.

Then the weather turned, as weather does when one has been loudly praising it. The warm breeze that had accompanied us became suddenly insistent, then frankly rude. Clouds assembled with the speed of people who have heard there is free food somewhere. Within twenty minutes we were caught in that particular Scandinavian rain that is not heavy so much as thorough, the kind that finds every gap in your clothing and settles in for a conversation. My shorts suddenly seemed less like cheerful holiday optimism and more like a genuine tactical error.

We squelched back to the cottage, my lecture on nature thoroughly drowned, my partner's plimsolls making a sound like wet newspapers being slowly murdered. And here is where the gentle self-reflection arrives, I suppose. I stood in that lovely wooden hallway, dripping onto stone tiles, and recognised something familiar in my own stubbornness. The insistence on shorts, the refusal to check a forecast, the need to walk immediately rather than sensibly. I do this, I realised. I rush toward experience without the proper preparation, and then I complain about the consequences with theatrical woundedness.

The cottage, at least, was perfectly equipped for our soggy return. We lit the wood burner that evening, though it was technically still August, and dried our clothes while eating bread and cheese from the Simrishamn market we had passed on our way in. The rain against the windows became companionable rather than mocking. We planned proper walks for the days ahead, sensible ones with proper boots and packed lunches and perhaps a modest respect for meteorological uncertainty.

The following morning brought that clean, bright aftermath that Scandinavian weather does so well. We walked again, better prepared, along the same coast now washed fresh and glittering. The path took us past wild apple trees and sudden views of hidden coves, past fishermen's huts painted in that particular Falu red that seems to belong exclusively to Sweden. We stopped at Stenshuvud National Park, within easy reach, where the trails climb through beech forest to viewpoints that make the previous day's soaking feel like a reasonable admission price.

But I think of that first arrival most often, the gravel crunch, the sun on my face, the rapid descent into damp humility. It was the true beginning of the holiday, the moment that established the pattern. Skane would give us warmth and beauty and walking paths that wandered through landscapes almost embarrassingly picturesque. It would also give us rain when we expected sun, and the occasional reminder that enthusiasm is no substitute for a decent pair of boots. We walked for miles in the days that followed, through meadows and along cliffs, through mornings of mist and afternoons of sudden, glorious heat. Each time I checked the sky with a little more care, packed a jumper with a little less resentment.

On our final evening we sat in the cottage garden, properly dressed for once, and watched the sun settle over Simrishamn in that prolonged, generous way that northern summers have. My partner's plimsolls had dried to a state of respectable stiffness and sat by the door like a small monument to holiday optimism. I thought about all the walking we had done, the miles of coast, the unexpected weather, the slow education in Swedish sunshine. The best journeys, I decided, are the ones that begin with a small disaster and end with the quiet understanding that you would not have changed a thing, except perhaps the shorts.