I have never been so relieved to see a stone wall in my life. After six hours of driving from Roscoff, my partner and I finally pulled up to our holiday home in Locquirec, only to realise I had been confidently navigating us to the wrong address for the last twenty minutes. The sat nav had given up in protest somewhere near Morlaix, and my phone map skills, it turns out, are roughly on par with my ability to speak Breton. Which is to say, nonexistent. We found the right place eventually, mostly by driving in circles until I recognised the photo from the booking site. Not my finest hour.

But then we stepped out of the car, and the smell of sea air hit us like a friendly slap. Our little stone house sat tucked among hydrangeas that looked almost aggressively blue, as if trying to prove something. The garden sloped down towards glimpses of the Baie de Locquirec, and suddenly my navigational shame felt very small indeed.

We had grand plans for our first evening. A gentle stroll to the Plage du Pouldu, perhaps a glass of wine watching the sunset. The weather, however, had other ideas. Brittany welcomed us with what I can only describe as enthusiastic drizzle. Not quite rain, not quite mist, but thoroughly committed to making everything slightly damp. We stood in the doorway in our walking boots, me with a borrowed OS map I had printed off with excessive optimism, and watched the clouds perform what felt like a personal grudge.

"Shall we just do it anyway?" my partner asked.

Reader, we did it anyway.

The path down to the coast started promisingly enough, a proper Breton country lane with hedgerows full of foxgloves and the occasional suspicious cow. Within ten minutes my supposedly waterproof jacket had begun a betrayal I will not forgive easily. The drizzle upgraded itself to proper rain without warning, the kind that finds every gap in your clothing and sets up camp. We squelched onwards, laughing in that slightly hysterical way you do when you have committed to a bad decision and there is no dignified retreat.

The coastal path proper began near Port de Locquirec, and here the weather showed its theatrical side. One moment we were peering through grey murk at fishing boats, the next a crack of sunlight would split the clouds and turn the granite cliffs golden. It was like walking through a landscape having an identity crisis. We scrambled over rocks at Pointe du Chateau, where the wind tried to remove my hat with genuine malice, and I found myself shouting weather observations to my partner like an amateur shipping forecast.

By day three I had developed what I can only call a weather obsession. Each morning began with me standing in the garden in my pyjamas, turning slowly like a human weather vane, trying to divine the day's possibilities. The forecast changed hourly. We planned hikes like military operations, studying cloud formations with the intensity of conspiracy theorists. A walk to the Pointe de Locquirec lighthouse became an epic when fog rolled in halfway, reducing visibility to roughly arm's length. We held hands like children, navigating by the sound of waves below, until suddenly the mist lifted and there was the lighthouse, appearing like a stage set that had missed its cue.

My favourite walk came on our fifth day, when stubborn low cloud refused to clear but we set out regardless for the Sentier des Douaniers. The old customs path clings to cliffs between Locquirec and Perros-Guirec, and in clear weather I imagine the views are spectacular. In ours, they were entirely theoretical. We walked through a world of green and grey, gorse bushes looming out of nowhere, the sea audible but invisible below. It felt like walking inside a watercolour someone had abandoned halfway through. My partner started humming the theme from a detective drama. I found myself talking to a sheep.

There is something about British weather in France that feels personally significant, though I know it is not. We bring our expectations with us, our holiday fantasies of blue skies and striped deckchairs, and Brittany simply does not care. I realised, somewhere around day four, standing in a bus shelter eating a slightly sandy crepe while rain performed percussion on the roof, that I had been fighting it. Treating the weather as an obstacle to my proper holiday rather than the holiday itself.

The turnaround came gradually. We stopped checking forecasts with religious fervour. We packed extra socks and embraced the squelch. On our final morning, we walked to the beach at dawn in conditions that can only be described as "aggressively atmospheric." The tide was out, the wet sand mirror-perfect, and the sky did that particular Breton thing where every shade of grey exists simultaneously, from pearl to charcoal to something almost lavender. No sunrise, no spectacular light show, just the quiet grey beauty of a coast that has never promised anyone anything.

I took a photograph. It looks, objectively, like a mistake. Underexposed, muted, possibly accidental. I love it more than any sunny snapshot I have ever taken.

We left Locquirec with muddy boots, damp jackets that never quite dried, and a collection of walks that existed mostly in memory rather than photograph. The sat nav failed us again on the way home, naturally. I did not even mind. Some navigations, I have learned, you simply have to make yourself, in whatever weather finds you.