I have never been particularly gifted at reading maps, which is how I found myself standing in a Scherpenisse farmyard, three miles from our actual holiday cottage, arguing with a goat about right of way. The goat won. It usually does.

The journey from the Eurotunnel had been smooth enough, a pleasant run through Belgium and into Zeeland with the sun blazing and the car windows down. My partner had dozed through most of it, waking only to murmur that the sat nav seemed "a bit quiet." I should have listened. Instead, I barrelled down a narrow lane convinced I knew better than a device with access to actual satellites. The farmyard incident followed shortly after, complete with a flustered Dutch farmer who very kindly pointed us back toward the proper road without once laughing in our faces. At least not where I could see.

When we finally located the actual cottage, tucked among trees on the edge of Scherpenisse village, I was ready to abandon driving forever and take up walking instead. This turned out to be rather prophetic. The place itself was immediately charming, all proper Zeeland character with whitewashed walls and a steep roof that looked designed to shed North Sea gales. A small garden led down toward a lane that, according to a faded sign, connected to the coastal walking network within half a mile. I unpacked my boots with the enthusiasm of a man who had just rediscovered his own two feet.

That first evening, we walked down to the nearest stretch of coast as the light turned golden. The Oosterschelde shimmered in the distance, and the path wound through fields that smelled of salt and warm earth. I felt rather smug about my new walking-based identity. The goat encounter was already becoming a funny story rather than a humiliation. We returned with plans for serious hiking the next day, tracing the coastline proper with packed lunches and ambitious intentions.

The weather, naturally, had other ideas.

I woke to grey skies and a wind that rattled the bedroom shutters. By the time we had finished our coffee, proper rain had set in, the sort of steady, determined drizzle that soaks through supposedly waterproof jackets with quiet persistence. We waited an hour. The rain waited longer. My partner suggested a board game. I suggested we were not the sort of people who let weather defeat us. We compromised by walking to the village anyway, getting thoroughly drenched, and retreating to a bakery for appelgebak that was so good I briefly forgot about my squelching socks.

The following days became a negotiation with Zeeland's changeable summer temperament. Mornings often arrived clear and promising, sending us hurrying onto the coastal paths with sandwiches and high hopes. We covered good ground, walking north toward the oyster beds and salt marshes where the land meets the water in a confusion of channels and mudflats. The Oosterschelde National Park trails were magnificent when the sun cooperated, flat enough for easy miles but never dull, with wading birds and the occasional seal to distract from the burning of calves unused to such consistent use.

But the warm weather never quite settled. Afternoon thunderstorms drove us into shelter more than once, huddled under trees or in the doorway of a closed beach pavilion, watching rain sweep across the water in visible curtains. One particularly dramatic downpour caught us two miles from the cottage, and we arrived back looking like we had swum rather than walked, laughing helplessly at our own refusal to check a forecast.

By the end of the week, I had accepted something I should have known from the start. The walking was wonderful precisely because it was unpredictable, because the same path could feel Mediterranean one morning and properly North Sea wild the next. My ambitious plan to cover maximum distance gave way to shorter, more attentive strolls, pausing to watch the light change over the water, to notice how the local farmers had stacked their hay, to appreciate a village honesty box selling strawberries still warm from the sun.

I never did master the art of reading Zeeland's skies. On our final morning, we set out in sunshine and were chased home by rain within the hour, arriving wet and grinning, boots muddy, plans abandoned once more. The goat would have been proud.