I have never been quite so grateful for a pair of wellies in all my life, and that includes the time I accidentally wore them to a wedding in Somerset. The journey to Feriendorf Wardersee had started with such promise, you see. Blue skies over the M25, a surprisingly painless Eurotunnel crossing, and then that glorious stretch of autobahn where you briefly convince yourself you are a racing driver. Schleswig-Holstein beckoned, all flat green fields and that particular northern German light that makes everything look slightly more romantic than it deserves.

The mishap came just outside Neumunster. I had stopped for petrol and, in that post-motorway daze, managed to fill the car with the wrong grade of diesel. Not catastrophic, apparently, but enough to make the engine sound like a disgruntled tractor for the remaining forty kilometres. I limped into the Feriendorf Wardersee reception with what I can only describe as agricultural humility, expecting raised eyebrows and perhaps a small fine for crimes against German engineering.

Instead, the woman behind the desk simply handed me a leaflet for the local garage and said, "This is Schleswig-Holstein. We have seen worse." I liked her immediately.

The cottage itself was one of those tidy wooden affairs, all pine cladding and sensible German curtains. I dumped my bags, pulled on my walking boots with the enthusiasm of a woman who had been sitting for six hours, and marched straight out towards Wardersee proper. The lake lay perhaps ten minutes away through birch woodland, and I had grand plans. A circumnavigation, certainly. Perhaps some birdwatching. Definitely a photograph for my mother that would make her jealous.

The weather had other ideas.

I had checked the forecast, of course. I am British. We check forecasts the way other people check their phones for messages, with the same mixture of hope and resignation. It had promised "scattered showers." What it delivered was something closer to a personal vendetta from the heavens. I had made it perhaps halfway around the lake when the first proper squall hit, sending me scurrying for the inadequate shelter of a particularly stout oak. My waterproof jacket, purchased with such confidence from a Cotswolds outlet village, proved about as effective as a paper bag. Within minutes I was experiencing that peculiar state of dampness where you must simply accept your fate and continue regardless.

I squelched back to the Feriendorf with the dignity of a bedraggled spaniel, passing a German family out for their afternoon constitutional. They were wearing proper Gore-Tex, the sort that costs more than my car repair probably would. They nodded politely. I nodded back, water dripping from my nose. We understood each other perfectly.

The following morning brought that particular Schleswig-Holstein phenomenon where the weather simply forgets its previous tantrum and presents you with misty perfection. I set out again, this time with borrowed determination and a borrowed umbrella from the cottage's thoughtful equipment cupboard. The birch woods were transformed, all spider webs and soft light, and Wardersee itself lay so still that the reeds stood in perfect reflection. I walked for hours, following the shoreline path through wetlands where lapwings called and the occasional heron lifted off with that indignant flap they do so well.

By afternoon the clouds had regrouped. I felt the first spots as I reached the far end of the lake, near where a small stream feeds in from the surrounding farmland. Rather than repeat yesterday's drowning, I made the executive decision to turn back. This became something of a theme over my stay. Walk out in optimism, retreat in strategic withdrawal. I began to think of myself less as a hiker and more as a weather front negotiator, always reading the sky, always ready to pivot.

On my third day I discovered the proper German response to such meteorological caprice. The Feriendorf Wardersee sits conveniently near enough to the village of Warder that one can walk there in twenty minutes, should one wish to purchase excellent cake and sit in a warm cafe watching the rain sheet down the windows. I wished this very much. The Konditorei there does something remarkable with apple and marzipan that almost justifies the entire damp expedition.

Between showers I managed proper walks too. The flat terrain of Schleswig-Holstein does not offer dramatic peaks, but it gives you something else instead: that sense of wide sky and distant horizon that makes you feel pleasantly insignificant. I found a route through the farmland behind the lake, all hedgerows and drainage ditches, where the path sometimes disappeared entirely into standing water and I simply had to trust my boots and press on. The mud had that particular consistency that threatens to steal your footwear entirely, and I may have uttered some unprintable words when I had to retrieve a boot by hand, standing one-legged like a particularly graceless flamingo.

What struck me, walking those damp paths, was how the weather had somehow become the point rather than the obstacle. Back home I would have abandoned the whole enterprise, retreated to a pub fire, waited for better conditions. Here, with limited time and a stubborn streak I did not know I possessed, I simply adapted. Shorter loops. More cake stops. The occasional sprint between squalls that left me laughing rather than cursing. There is something about northern Germany that encourages this practicality, this acceptance that you will get wet and you will survive.

My final morning brought the only genuinely sustained sunshine of the week. I walked the full circuit of Wardersee at last, dry-booted and almost disappointed by my own comfort. A kingfisher flashed past, improbably vivid against the reeds. The water lay flat and silver, and somewhere a cuckoo called with that mechanical persistence they have. I sat on a bench near the swimming area, popular in summer apparently but entirely mine in this uncertain May, and watched a pair of swans build their nest with the focused industry that swans bring to such tasks.

I thought about my waterlogged first day, my wrong-fuelled car, my general incompetence. I thought about how I had come expecting to conquer walks and instead been taught something gentler: how to walk with the weather rather than against it, how to find pleasure in the retreat as much as the advance. The German family passed again, still in their immaculate waterproofs. We nodded, old friends now in our shared understanding of damp Schleswig-Holstein mornings.

I left my wellies by the cottage door when I departed, a small offering to future walkers. The car started with its proper engine note, repaired and repentant. I drove away through those flat green fields with the rain beginning again, pattering against the windscreen in what felt almost like farewell.