I have never been so pleased to see a canal in all my life. After six hours of driving from the Eurotunnel, my partner and I finally rolled into Sint Annaland, only to discover that our carefully plotted route had directed us straight into a dead end at a marina car park. The satnav, in its infinite wisdom, had decided that our holiday cottage was apparently located somewhere between two fishing boats and a very confused-looking seagull. I had to perform a seventeen-point turn while a queue of Dutch cyclists formed behind us, each one wearing that particular expression of patient tolerance that makes you feel even more ridiculous.

We found the proper road eventually, of course. The cottage sat tucked along a quiet lane near the Grevelingenmeer, that enormous saltwater lake that dominates this corner of Zeeland. White-rendered walls, a proper thatched roof, and a garden that had clearly been loved by someone with far greener fingers than mine. I stood there with my rucksack still half-zipped, my walking boots already itching for action, and felt that particular relief that comes from knowing you have chosen somewhere genuinely peaceful.

The weather had promised twenty-three degrees and unbroken sunshine. Zeeland apparently had other plans. By morning, a thick haar had rolled in from the North Sea, reducing visibility to roughly the end of the garden path. Our ambitious plan to tackle the coastal trail from Sint Annaland down toward the Oosterscheldekering had to be shelved. I am not proud of how dramatically I sulked over my coffee.

Still, we are British. We walk in all conditions. We simply adjusted. The mist lent a strange, muted beauty to the polder paths behind the village, those dead-straight tracks between fields that seem to stretch toward infinity. We wandered for hours through a landscape reduced to greens and greys, the only sound our boots on the gravel and the occasional distant bell of a cow. My partner kept stopping to photograph spider webs bejewelled with moisture, while I developed a minor obsession with the elaborate drainage ditches that keep this entire region from simply becoming seabed again.

By afternoon the sun had burned through, and we made our desperate bid for the coast. The walking trail along the Grevelingenmeer is extraordinary when the weather plays fair. Crystal-clear shallows, little beaches of crushed shell, and that particular quality of Dutch light that seems to amplify every colour. We stripped to t-shirts and pushed hard along the dyke, passing weekend sailors and families with children who had apparently never heard of sunscreen. I acquired a sunburn of magnificent proportions on the back of my neck, because apparently I have learned nothing in four decades of existence.

The following days brought more of this meteorological chaos. Warm mornings that felt almost Mediterranean, sudden afternoon breezes that sent us reaching for jumpers, evenings so still you could hear water lapping half a mile away. We abandoned any pretence of planning. Some days we walked east toward the marina, watching the pleasure boats come and go, stopping at the little cafe for bitterballen and cold lager. Other days we headed inland through the nature reserve, where the paths become sandy and the vegetation turns properly wild, all salt-tolerant shrubs and strange, stunted trees bent by prevailing winds.

I had packed for a straightforward summer holiday. The reality was far more interesting. There is something about walking in changeable weather that forces you to pay proper attention. You notice the way the light shifts across the water, how the temperature drops the moment you turn inland, the particular smell of warm pine needles after rain. I stopped checking the forecast entirely and simply looked out the window each morning, which felt like a small liberation.

On our final evening, we walked back from a late supper at the harbour restaurant, the sky still faintly light at half past ten. My sunburn had finally settled into something approaching a tan. My boots were properly broken in. I had sand in the pockets of my shorts that I suspect will survive several washes. We passed the same marina where I had performed my automotive humiliation a week earlier, and I felt nothing but fondness for the place. That is the peculiar magic of a good walking holiday, I think. The mishaps become stories. The weather that frustrates your plans simply gives you different ones. And you arrive home with legs that ache satisfyingly and a head full of horizons.