I should have known the Harz would have the last laugh when I confidently told my mate Dave, "It's Germany, not the Lakes, how wet can it be?" Famous last words, those. The journey from Hanover had been textbook German efficiency until I missed my connection at Hildesheim because I was too busy admiring a bakery window full of Schnecken. By the time I reached Thale, I was two hours late, one pastry heavier, and sporting a impressive coffee stain down my only decent walking trousers.

The property sat at the edge of town, a solid wooden house that looked like it had been built by someone who properly understood winters. I fumbled with the key box for a good five minutes, performing what I can only describe as a modern dance interpretation of frustration, before realising I'd been entering the code backwards. Not my finest hour, and certainly not the composed arrival I'd imagined.

Stepping inside, the place smelled of pine and something else I couldn't place, something clean and mountainy. The owner had left a handwritten note wishing me "good wanderings" which I thought rather charming until I stepped back out and felt the first proper drop of rain hit my forehead. Then another. Then what I can only describe as the sky deciding to empty its entire contents directly above Thale.

I'd planned a triumphant first afternoon, striding up to the Hexentanzplatz like some seasoned alpine explorer. Instead I found myself in the local outdoor shop buying what the assistant cheerfully called "proper German rain trousers" while I stood there in sodden jeans, trying to maintain some dignity. I don't think I succeeded. The trousers were bright yellow. I looked like a maritime emergency.

The following morning brought that particular British holiday optimism where you wake up, see grey rather than black clouds, and think, "Well, that's practically sunshine." I set off for the Rosstrappe, the famous crag where, legend has it, a princess leapt across on horseback to escape some bother or other. The path started pleasantly enough, winding through beech woods that smelled properly ancient, the kind of place where you half expect to meet a goblin having a smoke break.

I made it perhaps forty minutes before the mist rolled in. Not romantic, atmospheric mist either, but the thick sort that turns the world into a grey sock. I found myself standing at a fork in the path with absolutely no idea which direction I'd come from, my phone insisting I was somewhere in the North Sea, and a growing suspicion that my "waterproof" jacket had been marketed with creative licence.

There's something about being properly lost in foreign woodland that clarifies the mind. I stood there, listening to my own breathing and the distant sound of what I desperately hoped was a cow rather than anything requiring me to move quickly, and had one of those moments of gentle self-reflection. I'd come to the Harz wanting to conquer it, to tick off peaks and stride purposefully through forests like the competent outdoorsman I absolutely am not. Instead I was slightly frightened, definitely damp, and wearing trousers the colour of a warning buoy.

I found my way back by following a stream downhill, which felt pleasingly primal until I slipped on a wet stone and sat down heavily in a patch of moss. The Rosstrappe would have to wait. I limped back to the house, brewed an enormous pot of tea, and stood at the window watching the weather perform its endless variations on the theme of precipitation.

The next three days established a rhythm I came to rather love. Morning optimism, afternoon weather reality, evening recovery. I walked the gentler valley paths when the rain softened to drizzle, learned to read the mountain weather signs from the local pensioners I encountered, and discovered that the Harz rewards patience more than bravado. On my final morning, the clouds finally parted like some theatrical revelation, and I did reach the Hexentanzplatz, though I arrived puffing and triumphant to find a coach party already there eating sandwiches.

Would I do it differently? Probably not. There's something honest about being humbled by weather and woodland, about realising that the mountains don't care about your plans. I left my bright yellow trousers hanging in the wardrobe for the next optimistic fool, and drove away already plotting a return, though perhaps with a better jacket and considerably less swagger.