So there I was, bombing down the E25 towards Luxembourg, Belgium, absolutely convinced I had the navigation sussed. My other half had printed directions because, quote, "your phone's always on one percent." Fair point, except she'd printed directions to Rendeux in the *other* Luxembourg, the one in the Ardennes of Belgium, not some random village in the actual Grand Duchy. We realised this precisely forty-five minutes after I'd confidently ignored the satnav's increasingly frantic recalculations. The argument lasted until we spotted a petrol station and a very patient woman who explained, in three languages, that we were in fact already in Belgium and heading roughly the right direction. I did not win that round.

We rolled up to the stone cottage in Rendeux proper around half six, me still smarting, her still smirking. The place sat among rolling hills with that particular Belgian Ardennes greyness that makes everything look like a watercolour someone's left out in the rain. Charming, mind. Proper charming.

The key handover was handled by Marcel, who I'd assumed was the owner but turned out to be the owner's cousin, the neighbour, and unofficial mayor of the lane. He spoke English in that spectacular Belgian way where every third word is French and every fourth is Walloon, and somehow you understand none of it perfectly yet all of it completely. He spent twenty minutes explaining the boiler, which apparently had "a personality," then another fifteen on the correct method for bagging bread from the bakery in Marcourt. "You don't ask," he said, wagging his finger. "You *declare*. 'Une baguette, s'il vous plait.' Like you mean it. Like you have always meant it." I practised in front of him until he was satisfied. My other half filmed this. It exists now in digital perpetuity.

Marcel's wife, Yvette, appeared with a jar of something purple and unlabelled. "Prunes," she announced, though the colour suggested otherwise. "From the tree. The one that fell in ' nineteen." We accepted it like it was the Holy Grail. Later inspection suggested it might actually be damson, or possibly elderberry, or potentially a substance science has yet to classify. Delicious, whatever it was. We ate it on crackers and felt briefly like locals, which lasted until we tried to operate the television and accidentally ordered something in Dutch that may or may not have been horse racing.

The bakery run the next morning was its own theatre. I'd prepared my declaration, stood straight, channelled Marcel's energy. The woman behind the counter, who introduced herself as Madame Defraigne with the gravity of a state occasion, looked me up and down and immediately switched to English. "You are the English from the stone house," she said. Not a question. "Marcel telephoned." Of course he had. Of course. She'd saved us two croissants "for the trying" and spent the transaction explaining her grandson's engineering degree in Liège, complete with folder of photographs. We left with pastries, a small cake "for the afternoon sadness," and an unexpected emotional investment in young Thierry's career prospects.

By day three we'd accumulated a cast. There was the chap at the tabac who sold us firelighters and his opinions on the European Union, neither of which we'd requested. The woman walking her enormous dog who stopped to discuss, at length, the correct pruning of the hedgerows we'd been admiring. She produced secateurs from her coat pocket to demonstrate. The dog watched with the resigned patience of one who'd seen this before.

Evenings we spent at the cottage, fire going, that purple jar gradually diminishing. We'd intended to dash about seeing sights, ticking boxes. Instead we found ourselves lingering in doorways, accepting offers of coffee we didn't particularly want, being shown vegetable gardens and photo albums and the proper way to identify edible mushrooms. My other half, the one who'd printed the wrong directions, turned out to be the superior conversationalist. She'd emerge from these encounters with biographies, family trees, invitations to christenings. I mostly stood there nodding, occasionally deploying my one confident French phrase, which was "je comprends" and was almost always a lie.

The boiler did indeed have a personality. A stubborn one. Marcel returned to commune with it, bringing his friend Jean-Pierre, who was not any kind of engineer but "good with feelings." They talked to it. They tapped it. They made tea and discussed its likely mood. Eventually it cooperated. They refused payment, accepted beer, and stayed for two hours discussing football, politics, and whether the bakery in Marcourt had gone downhill since Madame Defraigne's sister retired.

I arrived in Rendeux thinking I'd found a base for exploring the Ardennes. I left feeling I'd accidentally joined a very small, very specific community that I hadn't applied to and wasn't sure I'd qualified for, but which had accepted me anyway, on a provisional basis, subject to improvement in my bread-declaring technique and my general attitude toward boilers. We packed the purple jar, now nearly empty, in with the dirty laundry. My other half drove home. I navigated, phone plugged in, directions triple-checked. We took the scenic route anyway. Some things, once started, are difficult to stop.