The SatNav gave up somewhere between Toulouse and nowhere, which is how I found myself reversing down a single-track lane in the Midi-Pyrenees, convinced I'd just flattened a very relaxed-looking goat. Turns out it was a boulder. A boulder with horns, apparently, if you ask my wife, who found the whole thing considerably less amusing than I did.

We'd set off from Blagnac airport in high spirits, me armed with a printed map and an unshakeable confidence in my schoolboy French. Three hours later, having asked a bemused farmer for directions to "the big house with the swimming pool" and received a lengthy explanation about cheese production in return, we finally spotted the stone pillars of Sieurac. The place sits tucked into rolling countryside near Puylaurens, all honey-coloured walls and shuttered windows, looking like it had been waiting patiently for someone to bother finding it.

The owner, a wiry chap called Bernard, emerged from a barn wiping his hands on overalls. He surveyed our mud-spattered hire car with what I can only describe as agricultural sympathy. "You came the pretty way," he said, which I suspect was French for "you complete idiot."

The house itself was immediately proper. Thick walls that smelled of cool stone, a kitchen with a fireplace you could practically stand in, and bedrooms with those creaky wooden floors that announce your every trip to the loo at three in the morning. Bernard showed us the pool, the terrace, the barbecue that looked like it had cooked a thousand merguez sausages. Then he pointed out the walking maps.

Now, I am not a natural walker. My idea of outdoor exercise is walking to the pub. But there we were in walking country, surrounded by the Languedoc hills and Bernard's enthusiastic finger jabbing at various footpaths, and I felt something stir. Perhaps it was the fresh air. Perhaps it was the local wine we'd opened within seventeen minutes of arrival. Either way, I announced that we would walk. We would walk everywhere.

The next morning dawned grey and determined. British weather, I thought smugly, I've survived worse. We set off for a circuit Bernard had marked, heading east through scrubby woodland toward a ridge he'd described as "magnifique." The path climbed steadily, past dry stone walls and the occasional startled lizard, and I was feeling rather pleased with myself. My boots were muddy, my cheeks were flushed, I was practically Bear Grylls.

Then the rain started. Not dramatic thunderstorm rain, but that particular French drizzle that somehow finds every gap in your supposedly waterproof jacket. We pressed on, because that's what one does, isn't it? British stoicism and all that. The ridge, when we reached it, was indeed magnifique, though mostly magnifique in terms of low cloud and the distant suggestion of hills that might have been there, or might have been my imagination.

By the time we stumbled back to Sieurac, I had discovered that my waterproof trousers were waterproof in roughly the same way a teabag is waterproof. The pool looked mocking. The terrace looked mocking. Even the barbecue looked like it was smirking.

The following day we tried again, because apparently I don't learn. Bernard suggested a lower route, following a stream through a valley south of the house. "Plus facile," he promised. The weather, he assured us, would improve. The French meteo had said so.

The French meteo lied. We made it forty minutes before the heavens opened properly, the sort of rain that bounces back up and gets you from below as well. We sheltered under a holm oak that offered approximately the protection of a colander, watching the stream we'd been following transform from a pleasant babbling brook into something that would have troubled salmon. My walking boots, I noted with the detachment of a man whose feet had gone numb, now contained what felt like a small aquarium.

Back at Sieurac, we abandoned all pretence of outdoor adventure. I built a fire in that enormous kitchen fireplace, which took three attempts and most of a newspaper. We ate cheese and saucisson and drank more wine than was strictly necessary, watching the rain sheet down the terrace doors. Somewhere on day three, I realised that my walking obsession had been exactly that - an obsession with proving something, probably to myself, about being the sort of person who walks on holiday rather than just being on holiday.

The rain eventually stopped, of course. On our final morning, the sun appeared with almost embarrassing brilliance, and we did manage a short stroll to the nearest village, boots squelching melodically, passing vineyards and that same boulder-goat, which I greeted like an old friend. It was lovely, genuinely. But sitting by that fireplace, slightly drunk on local red, listening to rain that wasn't British rain for once - that was lovely too.

Bernard waved us off with a bag of apples and what I choose to believe was newfound respect. The SatNav worked on the return journey, which felt like cheating. I still haven't learned to walk properly, and my waterproofs have been quietly retired. But I can build a decent fire now, and I know that some places are worth getting lost for, even if you do argue with the local geology on the way in.