I have never been so grateful for a sat nav with a sense of humour, which is just as well because mine clearly thinks it is a comedian. We had been driving from Jerez airport for what felt like three hours but was probably forty minutes, winding through orange groves and past white villages that gleamed in the afternoon sun, when mine decided the shortest route to our holiday let in Chiclana involved a dirt track apparently last used by goats. Possibly in the 1950s.

The mishap came when I, in my infinite wisdom, thought I could outsmart technology. I spotted what looked like a proper road on the map, turned off the sat nav with a flourish, and promptly found myself in a farmyard surrounded by extremely unimpressed goats. Actual goats. They stared at me. I stared back. My partner, who had been dozing, woke up just in time to witness me attempting a seventeen-point turn while a goat with magnificent horns blocked my rear exit with the calm authority of a traffic warden. I have rarely felt so thoroughly judged by livestock.

By the time we found the proper road again, dusty and slightly humbled, the late afternoon light had turned golden and forgiving. The villa, when we finally reached it, sat behind a low wall with bougainvillea spilling over in ridiculous shades of magenta. I stepped out of the car and my first thought was that someone had turned up the saturation on reality. The air smelled of jasmine and something herbal I could not identify, warm and slightly salty from the nearby coast.

Our host had left the key in a lockbox with a note that simply said "Enjoy the walking!" which struck me as either charmingly casual or vaguely threatening, depending on your fitness level. We dumped our bags, opened every window to chase out the car journey, and I immediately made for the terrace with a cold beer from the fridge. The view was not dramatic mountains or crashing waves but something better: a soft landscape of pine trees and distant sand dunes, the kind of horizon that makes you want to lace up your boots and see what is over it.

That first evening, we walked barely half a mile toward the coast, just to stretch our legs and shake off the drive. The path was sandy underfoot, lined with low scrub that scratched at your ankles if you were silly enough to wear shorts, which I was. The temperature was still in the mid-twenties even at six o'clock, and I remember thinking this was exactly the kind of warmth that tricks you into overdoing things. I have made this mistake before, usually in Cornwall, usually involving sunburn and a stubborn refusal to admit I am not Mediterranean by blood.

We reached a small viewpoint as the sun dropped properly, and there was the Atlantic, suddenly present after all that winding through farmland, the water doing that thing where it looks both inviting and slightly too energetic for a casual paddle. My partner, who actually reads guidebooks rather than just carrying them, mentioned that the coastal path ran for miles in either direction, through the Parque Natural de la Brena y Marismas del Barbate. I nodded as if I knew exactly what she meant, privately resolving to look it up later without admitting my ignorance.

The next morning, the weather had other plans. We woke to a thick sea mist that had rolled in overnight, turning our promised sunny hike into something more atmospheric and slightly eerie. The temperature had dropped enough that my optimistic packing of just one thin jumper suddenly looked foolish. We set out anyway, because we are British and that is what we do, following the coastal path south with the fog muffling every sound except our own footsteps on the compacted sand and the distant, directionless crash of waves below the cliffs.

It was beautiful in a completely different way than I had expected. Without the blue-sky views, you noticed other things: the twisted shapes of the pines shaped by constant wind, the sudden bursts of wildflowers in colours too vivid for the grey light, the way the path would open unexpectedly to reveal a cove you had not seen coming. We walked for two hours and saw perhaps three other people, all of them locals with dogs who clearly considered this weather perfectly normal.

By midday, the sun had burned through as if the morning had never happened, and we found ourselves suddenly too hot, stripping off layers with the frantic energy of people who had dressed for entirely the wrong expedition. We ended up at a small beach bar near Playa de la Barrosa, slightly dishevelled, ordering cold drinks and fried fish with the particular hunger that comes from walking further than you intended in variable weather.

I sat there with my feet in the sand, slightly sunburned on one arm where I had rolled up a sleeve and forgotten about it, and thought about how rarely I let circumstances redirect me without grumbling. The mist had forced a slower pace, a different attention, and the sudden heat had made the cold drink feel earned rather than merely pleasant. It was a small revelation, the kind you have on holiday and promptly forget, but for that moment I felt genuinely pleased with myself for not retreating to the villa when the weather turned.

We walked back by a different route, inland through pine woods where the ground was soft with needles and the air smelled of resin and heat. My legs ached in that satisfying way, and I was already planning longer walks for the days ahead, already knowing I would misjudge the sun again, already not really minding. Some places teach you their rhythms slowly, through small discomforts and unexpected beauty, and Chiclana was doing exactly that, one sandy step at a time.