I have never been particularly good at reading maps, which is a polite way of saying I am absolutely hopeless. So when my partner handed me the directions to our Gedinne cottage just outside Namur, I should have known trouble was brewing. Three hours of confident driving from Calais, a brief argument about whether we were still in France, and one spectacularly wrong turn down a farm track later, we found ourselves staring at a very unimpressed Belgian cow. The cow, I must say, had the decency to look embarrassed on our behalf.

We eventually arrived at the stone cottage as the afternoon light was doing that lovely golden thing it does in late September. I had planned a grand entrance, perhaps sweeping my luggage through the door with the grace of someone who belongs in the countryside. Instead I tripped over the doorstep, caught myself on a rather fetching terracotta pot, and spent the first five minutes of our holiday pretending I had meant to inspect the geraniums quite that closely.

The cottage itself was immediately forgiving. Thick walls that looked like they had been there since someone first thought "Belgium seems a nice spot." A kitchen that smelled faintly of woodsmoke and previous guests who had actually managed to cook mussels without incident. I ran my hand along the wooden dining table and felt an unexpected contentment settle somewhere between my ribs. We had come here to do very little. The table, I decided, would be perfect for breakfast that stretched until lunch.

The garden proved irresistible by the second morning. I am not normally a garden person. My flat in London has a windowsill with a basil plant that I have resolutely killed three times now. But this garden was different. A sloping lawn bordered by trees that I later learned were beech and oak, though I could not tell you which was which without looking it up on my phone. A wooden bench positioned with what felt like deliberate cruelty toward anyone with a to-do list. I sat there with a book I had been meaning to read for eighteen months and managed six pages before dozing off in the sun. The book made an excellent pillow. I have no regrets.

There was a small patio with a barbecue that we used twice, though "used" suggests more competence than I demonstrated. The first attempt involved sausages that were simultaneously raw and burnt, a culinary achievement I did not think possible. We ate them anyway, sitting outside as the light faded and the trees became dark shapes against a navy sky. The second attempt was better, or perhaps we were simply hungrier. Both evenings ended with me in the same position: slumped in a deckchair, wine glass perilously balanced, feeling pleasantly unnecessary to the functioning of the world.

I had brought running shoes with noble intentions. They remained in my suitcase like silent accusations. Instead I developed a routine of wandering the immediate lanes in slippers, nodding at locals who probably thought I was eccentric or possibly unwell. There was a bakery in Gedinne village where I bought bread still warm from the oven, carrying it home through morning mist like some kind of carbohydrate-based treasure hunter. The walk took twenty minutes if I hurried. I never hurried.

By the fourth day I noticed something odd. My shoulders had dropped to their natural position. I was not checking my phone every eleven minutes. I had read, by actual count, forty-seven pages of that book, which may not sound impressive until you consider my previous rate was approximately four pages per year. The cottage had worked some modest magic simply by being still, by offering nothing more demanding than the choice between garden bench or patio chair.

On our final morning I made coffee and stood at the kitchen window watching a squirrel bury something in the lawn with the frantic energy of someone who has forgotten where they left their keys. I felt a strange tenderness toward the moment, toward the unremarkable beauty of it. We would pack soon, drive back to Calais, return to lives that moved faster than this. But something of that stillness had lodged in me, I hoped permanently, though I suspected London would test that hope within approximately forty-five minutes of our return.

I left the running shoes behind, accidentally on purpose. The cottage could keep them as a reminder of ambitions I no longer felt guilty about abandoning.