I have never been a natural at the whole "relaxing holiday" thing. Give me a city break with a packed itinerary and I am in my element. So when my other half suggested a week in a cottage in Le Minihic-sur-Rance, a tiny village on the Brittany coast, I will admit I was sceptical. A whole week of doing very little? Sounded like my personal nightmare. Or so I thought.

The journey from Portsmouth to Saint-Malo was surprisingly painless, right up until the final ten minutes. We had been smug about our excellent navigation, cruising through the French countryside with the windows down and a baguette already half-eaten in my lap. Then we turned down what I can only describe as a glorified tractor path, convinced it was a shortcut. It was not a shortcut. It was someone's driveway, and that someone was standing in their garden holding a rake and looking deeply unimpressed. I waved with the desperate enthusiasm of a person who has made a terrible error, reversed with the grace of a drunk elephant, and eventually found the actual road. My other half found this hilarious. I did not, though I can see the funny side now. Mostly.

The cottage itself appeared down a narrow lane lined with hydrangeas, those enormous blue pom-pom flowers that seem to explode out of every garden in this part of Brittany. Our place was a traditional stone building with a slate roof and shutters that actually shut, which felt thrillingly authentic. The key was in a lockbox, which I fumbled with for an embarrassing length of time, still flustered from my agricultural detour. When the door finally opened, the smell hit me immediately: wood polish, dried lavender, and that particular cool, slightly damp scent of old French houses. It was glorious.

I had brought three books, which seemed optimistic at the time. Within two hours of arrival, I was already halfway through the first one, sprawled on a deckchair in the garden with a cup of tea going cold beside me. The garden was not manicured or fancy, just a proper cottage garden with fruit trees, a slightly wonky clothes line, and a patch of lawn that had clearly given up on being perfect. A tortoiseshell cat from next door wandered through at one point, looked at me with undisguised contempt, and left. I felt I had passed some kind of test.

The first evening, we walked the five minutes down to the Rance estuary. The tide was going out, leaving those incredible patterns in the mudflats that look like abstract art if you squint. A couple of locals were fishing from the rocks, not speaking, just existing together in that very French way. We bought cider and galettes from a small shop on the way back, ate them in the garden as the light went soft and golden, and I realised with some surprise that I had not checked my phone in four hours. This was unprecedented.

By day three, I had stopped wearing a watch. The rhythm of the cottage became my rhythm. Wake slowly, make coffee in the slightly eccentric kitchen where everything was either too high or too low, read in the garden until my legs went numb from the deckchair, wander down to the estuary or not bother, eat something simple, read more, sleep early. The biggest decision I made all week was whether to move my chair into the sun or stay in the shade. I chose shade. The cat approved.

I used to think doing nothing was wasted time. I see now that I had it backwards. Those lazy days in Le Minihic, watching the light change across the garden, finishing books I had carried around for months, letting the tide dictate the mood rather than any schedule, they were not empty. They were full in a different way, a way I had forgotten existed. I arrived thinking relaxation was something to endure. I left wondering how soon I could return to do absolutely nothing again.