I should have known the holiday was going to be eventful when our sat nav decided that "Saulxures" sounded suspiciously like "sore knees" and tried to send us up what I can only describe as a goat track somewhere near Colmar. There we were, three hours from Calais, two children asking if we were nearly there yet, and me insisting we follow the technology because surely a machine knows better than a human with an actual paper map. Reader, it did not.

We arrived at the cottage in proper British fashion: forty minutes late, slightly sweaty, and with a boot full of snacks that had somehow fused together in the heat. The property sat at the edge of the village, all timber framing and flower boxes that looked almost aggressively picturesque, as if someone had told Alsace to dial it up for the tourists and it had taken this as a personal challenge. I stepped out of the car and immediately walked into a low wooden beam that I am convinced had been waiting specifically for me. My wife laughed for a solid minute while I rubbed my forehead and pretended this was exactly the rustic authenticity I had been seeking.

The key was where the owner said it would be, which felt like a small miracle given our navigational failures. The door opened with that satisfying weight that old buildings have, the kind that makes you feel like you are entering somewhere with proper history rather than a flat-pack interpretation of it. Inside smelled of wood polish and something faintly herby, perhaps the previous occupants had been cooking with the local thyme, or perhaps the house simply came with its own permanent aroma of French competence.

The children bolted past me towards the garden before I could issue my standard lecture about not touching anything until we had done a full damage assessment. I found them five minutes later staring at a family of cats who had apparently appointed themselves official welcome committee. The cats looked at us with the weary tolerance of creatures who had seen many British families come and go, many of them also late and confused.

I will confess that my first proper look around the cottage happened with a cup of tea made from water that took an age to boil on the unfamiliar hob. The kitchen had that glorious chaos of mismatched crockery and implements whose purposes I could not immediately identify. There was a whisk that looked like it had been forged in another century. I held it with the reverence of a man who does not trust himself with historical objects.

The garden proved to be the real revelation. Not manicured, not neglected, but existing in that perfect middle ground where wildflowers had been allowed their opinions and a small terrace caught the afternoon sun with almost theatrical precision. I sat there with my tea, forehead still tender from the beam, and watched my children attempt to befriend the cats with the desperate enthusiasm of children who have been in a car for hours and need immediate animal validation.

What struck me, even in those first hours, was how quickly the rhythm of the place imposed itself. No urgent sightseeing, no checklist of experiences to accumulate. Just the particular pleasure of figuring out which window caught the breeze, where the floorboard creaked, how the light fell across the kitchen table at six o'clock. I had arrived expecting to do Alsace, to consume it in the efficient manner of a modern holidaymaker. Instead I found myself, rather against my nature, simply being in it, beam-bruised and slightly lost and unexpectedly content.