I thought I had the whole thing planned to perfection. Sat nav programmed, playlist curated, snacks stacked like a small supermarket display. Six hours from the Eurotunnel to St Jean de Monts in Pays de la Loire, give or take. What I had not planned for was my own spectacular talent for misreading a booking confirmation.

We rolled up to our Novasol property, a tidy little place with pine trees whispering behind it and that particular coastal light that makes everything look slightly overexposed. I was already mentally unpacking the walking boots, mapping out coastal trails in my head. Then I tried the door code. Nothing. Tried again. Still nothing. My partner gave me that look. You know the one. The one that says, "You've done something, haven't you?"

Turns out I had booked the wrong week entirely. A week in July, not June. There we stood, me with my rucksack full of waterproofs and Ordnance Survey attitude, staring at a locked door in a French seaside town with nowhere to sleep. The walk I had planned for that afternoon, a gentle seven-kilometre loop through the salt marshes north of town, suddenly felt like a fantasy from someone else's holiday.

After some frantic phone calls and a small financial surrender, we got sorted with the actual correct dates. But that first evening, we had to find a room in town. The hotel was fine. Perfunctory. The kind of place where the shower attachment has a personality disorder and the curtains do not quite meet in the middle. I lay there listening to unfamiliar traffic and thought about how thoroughly I had engineered my own chaos. The confidence of the man with his laminated walking itinerary, his tide times printed out. All of it useless because I cannot apparently operate a calendar.

The next morning, proper holiday finally underway, I woke to grey skies and a wind that had clearly got up on the wrong side of the Atlantic. This was not the blue-skied Pays de la Loire from the brochures. This was British weather that had followed me across the Channel like a loyal but depressing pet. We set off anyway, because I am stubborn and because I had promised myself the coastal path from St Jean de Monts towards Notre Dame de Monts.

The first mile was exhilarating in a punished sort of way. Sand whipping horizontally. That particular hollow roar of sea meeting land. The pine forest to our left doing its best impression of a windbreak and failing. My so-called breathable jacket was making interesting decisions about where to let water in. We passed a French family in proper kit, all Gore-Tex and sensible hats, who gave us the nod of people who recognise fellow sufferers. Or possibly idiots. The distinction was unclear.

By the time we reached the little port area, the rain had settled into something more committed. We sheltered under a boatyard awning and ate soggy sandwiches that tasted of determination. I had planned a full circuit back through the forest trails, but standing there with water finding new routes down my neck, I admitted something. Sometimes the weather wins. Sometimes your own incompetence with a booking system sets a tone. And sometimes you just need to turn around.

We did walk back, but through the town instead, past the covered market and the shops selling striped beach towels to people with better timing than us. The afternoon became hot chocolate in a cafe where the proprietor seemed genuinely surprised anyone was out. We laughed about the wrong-week debacle. My partner was kinder than I deserved.

The rest of the week brought better walks, properly planned, properly weather-windowed. A glorious morning through the forest of Pays de Monts when the sun finally committed. An evening stroll along the beach at low tide, the sand packed firm enough to make you feel like an explorer. But I keep thinking about that first day, the locked door and the horizontal rain. How I had wanted to control everything, and how the holiday taught me gently that you cannot, not really. You just walk anyway, adjust, find the cafe, drink the chocolate, try the door again next week.