I had been dreaming of Provence sunshine for months, so naturally I packed three pairs of shorts, two sun hats, and absolutely nothing waterproof. This proved to be what my mother would call "a learning moment" when we arrived at our maison in Maussane-les-Alpilles after a frankly heroic journey from Gatwick.

The drive from Marseille airport had started well enough. My partner, Dave, was navigating with the confidence of a man who had briefly lived in Lyon twenty years ago. We were making excellent time until Dave decided to take what he called "a scenic route" through the Alpilles hills. The sat nav had a small nervous breakdown. We ended up on a track so narrow that I found myself holding my breath whenever another vehicle approached, which happened exactly once and involved a very French shrug from a man in a Citroen van who reversed half a mile without a single change of facial expression.

We finally found our holiday home down a lane of plane trees, and I will admit that my first sight of it made me forgive absolutely everything. The stone house sat there looking impossibly picturesque, with shutters in that particular shade of green that makes British paint manufacturers weep with envy. There was a small pool glittering in what was, at that precise moment, genuinely warm sunshine. I unpacked my shorts with triumph.

The following morning I woke to rain. Not dramatic thunderstorm rain, but that persistent, grey, thoroughly British drizzle that seemed to have followed us from Hertfordshire. I stood at the window in my pyjamas with a cup of tea that Dave had made with approximately half a bag of leaves, watching water run down the olive trees. My shorts looked back at me from the chair with what I can only describe as mockery.

We had planned to walk to Les Baux-de-Provence that day, a village perched dramatically on rocky outcrops about five miles north. The guidebook called it "one of France's most beautiful villages," which normally I would dismiss as hyperbole, but Dave had been before and kept using words like "breathtaking" with an embarrassing sincerity. The rain, however, had other ideas. We stood in the kitchen debating whether waterproofing was a state of mind while eating bread and cheese for breakfast, then second breakfast, then what I suppose was technically lunch.

By mid-afternoon the drizzle had softened to what Dave optimistically termed "atmospheric mist." We pulled on the one pair of walking shoes we had between us, borrowed a large umbrella from the house, and set off anyway. The path wound through olive groves and past vineyards where the vines looked stark and dramatic against the grey sky. Within ten minutes my shoes were making that squelching noise. Within twenty, Dave's "atmospheric mist" had progressed to "proper precipitation."

We pressed on like the stoic British idiots we are, passing a farm where dogs barked at us with what felt like justified contempt. The umbrella turned inside out twice. I developed a new theory about why the French invented the cafe culture, namely that at some point everyone simply gave up on outdoor activities and went indoors for a heated argument about philosophy.

We made it perhaps two miles before admitting defeat in a small wood where the path had become something approaching a stream. We turned back, squelching with renewed vigour, and arrived at the house looking like we had fallen into the pool fully clothed. I ran a bath that was approximately the temperature of molten lava and sat in it until my fingers resembled prunes.

The next morning brought actual sunshine, the kind that makes Provence famous. We set off for Les Baux again, this time with dry shoes and proper determination. The walk was glorious, the village genuinely breathtaking in that embarrassing way Dave had promised, and we celebrated with ice cream in the main square while I silently acknowledged that perhaps my weather expectations had been somewhat naive.

That evening, back at the house, I watched the sunset paint the Alpilles hills in shades of orange and pink. My shorts, finally worn, lay crumpled on the chair. The umbrella dried on the terrace, looking slightly bent and deeply apologetic. I realised, not for the first time, that the best holiday stories rarely come from the days that go exactly to plan.