I have always believed that the best holidays begin with a small disaster, and our trip to Ostseeresort Olpenitz in Schleswig-Holstein proved me absolutely right. We had driven up from Hamburg in a hire car that smelled faintly of wet dog and optimism, my partner navigating while I clutched a packet of crisps and pretended to understand the Autobahn. All was going swimmingly until we reached the final stretch near Kappeln, where I confidently directed us down what I insisted was a "scenic coastal route." It turned out to be a farm track. A very muddy farm track. A very muddy farm track with a locked gate at the end and a herd of Friesian cattle looking at us with what I can only describe as deeply judgmental expressions. We reversed for nearly a mile. My partner did not speak to me for twenty minutes, which in relationship terms is approximately three days.

By the time we finally arrived at Ostseeresort Olpenitz, I was prepared to fall to my knees and kiss the Baltic pavement. The resort sits right on the Schlei fjord, that strange and wonderful finger of brackish water that reaches inland from the sea, and our apartment was one of the modern timber-clad numbers with a balcony facing the water. I threw open the doors with theatrical enthusiasm, ready to breathe in that northern German air, and was immediately hit by a horizontal rain that soaked my left side entirely. The weather, I quickly realised, was going to be the true protagonist of this holiday.

We had packed for walking. Proper walking, you understand: boots with serious tread, waterproof trousers that rustle embarrassingly, Ordnance Survey enthusiasm transferred somewhat optimistically to German OSM maps. The Ostseeresort Olpenitz sits in that peculiar landscape where Schleswig-Holstein dissolves into marsh and meadow, where the sky feels enormous and the paths tend either toward the dykes or the water's edge. Our first morning dawned grey but still, and we set off along the Schlei-Uferweg with the confidence of people who had not yet learned respect.

The path took us through reed beds where the Baltic lapped with surprising gentleness, past sailing boats hibernating in their marinas, and out toward the open meadows where lapwings were doing their mad aerial displays. I was just remarking how pleasant it all was, how the British weather obsession was clearly overblown, when the horizon simply vanished. One moment we could see Kappeln's church tower; the next, a wall of pale grey advanced across the flats with the inevitability of a queue at the post office. The rain began vertically, then horizontally, then somehow from below in a way I still do not understand scientifically. We took shelter in a bus stop that smelled of fish and regret, huddled together like damp penguins, and laughed until my ribs hurt. There is something about being properly soaked with someone you love that strips away all pretence. We were ridiculous, and we knew it, and there was genuine freedom in that.

The weather became our companion and our adversary for the remaining days. We learned to read the Schlei sky with the anxious expertise of farmers, setting out in borrowed moments of brightness and retreating when the squalls came through. One afternoon we walked the coastal path toward the Olpenitzer Niederung, that low wetland reserve where the sea meets the land in a confusion of salt marsh and mudflat. The wind was blowing Force 6, according to a helpful German walker who seemed delighted by this information, and it carried the sharp mineral smell of the Baltic. We watched oystercatchers probing the mud, their orange bills like little tools, and I felt that particular peace that comes from being buffeted by elements you cannot control.

On our final morning, we attempted the full circuit around the resort's peninsula, setting out in what we thought was a stable window. We made it forty minutes before the heavens opened with theatrical malice, forcing us into a beach shelter where we ate emergency marzipan and watched the rain turn the Schlei into a grey sheet. My partner observed that we had walked perhaps six miles total across four days, and spent approximately equal time in various shelters. I started to apologise, to frame it as a failed walking holiday, but they stopped me. We had seen the landscape in all its moods, they said. We had learned its rhythms rather than imposing our own. And we had laughed more than on any beach holiday where the sun simply sits there, being hot and boring.

We left Ostseeresort Olpenitz with our boots still damp, our waterproofs finally tested to destruction, and a strange affection for Schleswig-Holstein's uncompromising climate. The Friesian cattle, I am certain, would have approved.