I have never been brilliant at following satnav instructions, so it was hardly a surprise when ours tried to send us through what looked suspiciously like someone's beet field somewhere north of Bremen. My partner sat in the passenger seat with that particular expression of British restraint, the one that says "I told you to take the A27" without actually uttering a word. Three U-turns and one very awkward encounter with a tractor later, we finally spotted the little wooden sign for Tossens.

The holiday home looked exactly as the pictures had promised, which in my experience almost never happens. A proper North Sea coast cottage with that distinctive Frisian style, all white render and dark timber, huddled amongst dunes that seemed to shift and breathe in the wind. I bounded out of the car full of purpose, ready to stretch my legs after six hours of driving, and promptly put my foot straight into a puddle I had somehow failed to notice. My walking boots, which I had proudly unpacked that morning, were now thoroughly saturated before I had even laced them up properly. My partner laughed so hard she had to lean against the car.

We had planned our entire week around walking. The Butjadingen peninsula is criss-crossed with these marvellous trails through salt marshes and along the Wadden Sea coast, and I had spent evenings beforehand poring over maps like a proper expedition leader. The Wadden Sea itself is a UNESCO World Heritage site, this extraordinary stretch of tidal flats where the seabed becomes land and then sea again twice daily. I was determined we would walk the mudflats, explore the coastal paths, perhaps even make it to the harbour at Fedderwardersiel for fresh fish.

The weather, naturally, had other ideas.

I woke the first morning to rain that can only be described as enthusiastic. Not the gentle English drizzle I understood, but something more committed, more German in its efficiency. We waited. The forecast promised improvement by afternoon. We put on our waterproofs and set off along the dyke path towards the Schillig peninsula, me squelching slightly in my still-damp boots. The North Sea wind hit us like a physical wall the moment we cleared the shelter of the dunes. Within twenty minutes, horizontal rain had found its way through every zip and seam. We turned back, laughing and swearing in roughly equal measure, steam rising from the radiator as we dripped onto the cottage floor.

The second day brought fog so thick I could barely see the end of the garden path. We attempted a short loop through the nearby woodland, thinking ourselves clever for choosing shelter, only to find every trail marker obscured and ourselves walking in circles like characters in a folk tale. I had not brought a compass. Of course I had not brought a compass. We navigated by the sound of distant sheep and emerged onto a road I did not recognise, two miles from where we had started.

By day three, I had developed what I can only describe as a stubbornness about the whole business. The weather had become personal. I studied forecasts with the intensity of a gambler, looking for gaps, for windows of opportunity. When a pale sun finally broke through on the Thursday morning, we practically sprinted to the coastal path. The mudflats lay exposed, that extraordinary silvery-grey landscape stretching towards the horizon, and we walked for hours along the hard sand where the tide had retreated. Gulls wheeled overhead. Somewhere, seals barked. I felt utterly triumphant, as if I had personally arranged the weather through sheer force of will.

That afternoon, naturally, the rain returned. We sat in the cottage with cups of tea, my boots finally drying on the radiator, and I found myself reflecting on how much of my holiday energy had gone into battling something I could not control. There was something almost comically British about it, this determination to walk regardless, this treating of weather as opponent rather than context. The Frisian coast did not care about my plans. The tides came and went on their ancient schedule. The rain fell where it wished.

We did manage several more walks in our remaining days, including a glorious morning to the Tossens lighthouse where the wind threatened to remove my hat permanently. Each success felt earned, negotiated, slightly miraculous. My boots never quite recovered their original colour.

I think what stays with me is not the walks themselves but the waiting for them, the watching of skies, the learning to read a landscape's moods. There is a particular patience required of coastal living that I do not naturally possess, and Tossens taught it to me in its own waterlogged way. I returned home with muddy trousers, a slightly battered pride, and a new appreciation for dry socks.