I should have known the holiday was going to be character-building when I put the postcode into the sat nav and it suggested we drive through what appeared to be someone's front garden. My partner, who had been in charge of directions for precisely three minutes, announced with great confidence that this was "definitely a shortcut." It was not a shortcut. It was a farm track, and we spent twenty minutes reversing past some very unimpressed-looking Limousin cattle who seemed to be judging our life choices.

By the time we actually found Bas-en-Basset, somewhere in the Haute-Loire department of Auvergne, I had developed what I can only describe as a profound relationship with the clutch pedal. The village itself sits in that lovely, slightly rumpled French countryside where everything feels like it has been there since before anyone thought to write things down. Stone houses, narrow lanes, the occasional cat giving you the look that says you are trespassing on its territory.

The property, when we finally located it, was one of those traditional stone holiday homes that the French do so well and we British attempt to replicate with varying degrees of failure back home. Thick walls, wooden shutters, that particular smell of old stone and woodsmoke that makes you feel instantly like you should be wearing a beret and carrying a baguette. I was prepared to be enchanted. I was prepared to be the sort of person who casually mentions "our place in France" at dinner parties.

What I was not prepared for was the key safe.

It was one of those numerical affairs, the sort that requires three hands and the patience of a saint. The instructions, which I had photographed on my phone with the carelessness of someone who assumed they would remember the context, simply said "behind the blue pot." There was no blue pot. There was a terracotta pot, a green pot that had seen better days, and what I initially thought was a pot but turned out to be a small bucket with a hole in it. I tried the green pot. Nothing. I tried the bucket, which promptly filled with rainwater and soaked my sleeve. My partner, demonstrating the selective deafness that comes over them in moments of crisis, had wandered off to inspect a lavender bush.

I found the key safe eventually. It was behind the terracotta pot, which in certain lights, if you squinted and had perhaps had a glass of local wine, could arguably be described as blue-ish. The code worked on the third attempt, by which point I had attracted an audience of one extremely old dog from the neighbouring property who watched the entire performance with the weary resignation of someone who had seen this exact scene play out every Saturday since the millennium.

The door opened with that satisfying weight that old French doors have, all heavy wood and proper ironmongery, and we stepped into the cool interior. I will be honest: for about thirty seconds, I forgot about the cattle and the key safe and the wet sleeve. The place had that lovely high-ceilinged simplicity, wooden beams, a kitchen that looked like it had actually been used for cooking rather than display purposes. My partner, reappearing from what they later described as "essential lavender reconnaissance," made a noise that I interpreted as approval.

Then I went to open the shutters to let some light in, and one of them came off in my hand.

Not entirely off, you understand. Just enough to hang there at a tragic angle, like a broken wing, while I stood there holding the iron latch and wondering if this was the moment I became officially middle-aged and incompetent. My partner, bless them, simply took the latch, examined it with the expertise of someone who had once watched a YouTube video about DIY, and pronounced that it would "probably go back on." It did go back on, after a fashion, though it now requires a specific wiggle that I have not yet mastered.

We spent the rest of the afternoon in that slightly dazed state that follows any journey involving wrong turns and minor domestic disasters. I made tea with the funny little French kettle and sat on the terrace, which looked out over a garden that managed to be both charming and slightly wild, the sort of garden that knows what it is doing even if you do not. Somewhere in the distance, a church bell marked the hour with the unhurried rhythm of a place that has never heard of rush hour.

I watched my partner attempt to work the outdoor barbecue, which was one of those proper charcoal affairs that requires actual skill rather than just turning a dial. There was some swearing, some newspaper that refused to light, and eventually a small fire that I chose to interpret as success. We ate sausages that tasted better than they had any right to, drank wine from a bottle with a label we could not pronounce, and watched the light change over the Auvergne hills.

I thought about the sat nav, and the cattle, and the shutter that now wiggles. I thought about how I had arrived expecting some version of a polished travel brochure and had instead found something much more interesting: a place that demanded a bit of effort, a bit of patience, a bit of willingness to look slightly foolish. The Auvergne does not perform for you. It simply is there, solid and ancient and slightly indifferent to your plans, and you must meet it on its own terms.

The dog from next door wandered past again, still looking unimpressed. I raised my glass to it, and to the broken shutter, and to the particular beautiful chaos of arriving somewhere new and finding that you are not quite as together as you imagined. The bell tolled again. My partner burned the second round of sausages. I decided, right then, that I was going to like it here.