I had convinced myself that driving from Harwich to Friesland in one go was a perfectly sensible idea for a man who considers a trip to the garden centre an expedition. Twelve hours, two ferries, and one spectacularly wrong turn later, I found myself in a village called something unpronounceable, staring at a sat nav that had apparently given up on me entirely. I had been aiming for Tzummarum. I had arrived in what I later learned was someone's private driveway, complete with a very friendly dog and a farmer who found my Franglais attempts at explanation far funnier than I did.

The actual property, when I finally located it, sat on the edge of Tzummarum proper, a compact little place with thatched roofing and the sort of tidy garden that immediately made me feel guilty about my own patch back in Leicester. I unloaded the car in what I thought was a brisk, efficient manner, only to realise I had been holding my phone the entire time while searching frantically for it. This set the tone nicely.

I had come for walking, you see. Proper coastal walking, the kind that blows the cobwebs out and justifies enormous dinners. The Wadden Sea coast lay within easy reach, that extraordinary stretch of mudflats and salt marsh that transforms completely with the tides. My plan was ambitious: three days of striding along the dykes, maybe spotting seals, definitely feeling pleased with myself.

The first morning dawned warm and still, almost suspiciously so for the Netherlands in late spring. I set off towards the coast near Paesens-Moddergat, full of purpose and slightly too much breakfast. The path along the sea dyke was everything I had imagined - flat, yes, but with that huge northern sky pressing down, the kind of openness that makes you feel either wonderfully free or uncomfortably small depending on your mood. I was mostly free, occasionally small when I mistook a distant sheep for a seal and got embarrassingly excited.

By midday the temperature had climbed into the mid-twenties, which sounds lovely until you are trudging along a dyke with precisely zero shade. The Wadden landscape offers many things - beauty, birds, profound tranquillity - but trees are not among them. I had packed for typical Friesland weather, meaning waterproof everything and jumpers. I had not packed sufficient water, sunscreen, or the sense to turn back. The gentle self-reflection arrived somewhere around hour three, when I found myself hiding behind a particularly wide sheep shelter, trying to create shade using my own body and a Ordnance Survey map.

The weather, it turned out, had plans of its own. What began as pleasantly warm became genuinely hot, then became hot with added humidity that seemed to roll in from the mudflats themselves. My second day's intended marathon along the coast shrank to a modest morning stroll to the nearest village shop for ice cream, which I ate sitting on a bench like a pensioner, and I am not ashamed. The Wadden Sea in unexpected heat becomes less an invigorating wilderness and more a shimmering, slightly smelly sauna. The mudflats, usually fascinating with their patterns and birdlife, simply baked. Even the birds looked fed up.

I adapted, as one must. Early mornings became my territory, those precious hours before the heat built when the dyke paths were empty and the light lay golden across the grass. I walked to Holwerthuizen and back, watching the cockle boats prepare for the tide's return. Afternoons I spent at the cottage, reading in the garden with a succession of cold drinks, occasionally waving at cyclists who passed with the effortless superiority of people who had checked the forecast properly.

The final evening, I attempted one last coastal walk, setting out around six when the temperature had dropped to merely warm. The tide was coming in, transforming the grey-brown flats into something silvered and strange. I walked further than intended, chasing the changing light, and returned after dark with a blister, a sunburn that had finally appeared despite everything, and the satisfied exhaustion of someone who had finally, imperfectly, found their rhythm. The farmer's dog, I noticed, no longer barked at my car.