I have never been so relieved to see a gravel driveway in all my life. After six hours on the road from Roscoff, two wrong turns near Morlaix, and one spectacular argument with our sat nav which I definitely won on points, we finally spotted the stone walls of our Pommeret just outside the village of Pommeret itself. The thing is, nobody tells you that French country lanes have a personal vendetta against British cars. Ours is a modest hatchback, not some lumbering 4x4, and yet there we were, wedged between a hedge and what I initially thought was a very relaxed cow but turned out to be a water trough. My wife Sarah was giving me that look. You know the one. The look that says she married me for better or worse but had not fully considered the worse might involve reversing 200 yards past brambles while three local farmers watched in polite amusement.

The key was in a lockbox, which sounds straightforward until you realise the photo on the booking site showed a completely different colour door. We tried three before Sarah spotted the tiny numbered plaque half hidden by wisteria. The wisteria was lovely, by the way. I mention this because at that precise moment, standing there with a suitcase wheel that had mysteriously developed a squeak somewhere around Brest, appreciating wisteria felt like the most sophisticated thing I had ever done.

Then the door opened and the smell hit us. Old wood, something herby from the garden, and that particular damp stone scent that makes you think of centuries rather than maintenance issues. The owners had left a bottle of cider on the kitchen table, which in Brittany is basically a welcome mat. The kitchen was all terracotta tiles and beams so low I immediately cracked my head on one while reaching for a light switch. Sarah laughed for a full minute. I laughed too, eventually, once the stars cleared.

The sitting room had a fireplace you could practically stand in, plus furniture that looked like it had been chosen by someone's sensible aunt in 1987. I loved it instantly. There is something deeply comforting about a floral sofa that has already survived several decades of holidaymakers. It removes all pressure to be precious. Our two children, Lily and Tom, had bolted upstairs to claim bedrooms before I could warn them about low beams, resulting in two more head-clunks and a lot of dramatic rolling about on ancient floorboards.

I should mention the garden, because it became our everything that week. Not manicured, not landscaped, just a proper Breton garden with apple trees, a vegetable patch going slightly rogue, and a terrace where we ate every single meal. The first evening we sat out with that welcome cider, some bread from the boulangerie in Broons, and cheese that smelled like it was actively plotting something. The children were filthy from exploring the little stream at the bottom of the property. Sarah was reading a novel she would never finish. I was doing nothing at all, which is harder than it sounds and took me roughly three days to properly achieve.

That first night, I lay in bed listening to complete silence broken only by an owl and what I choose to believe was a distant tractor rather than anything more rural and alarming. The mattress had that slight sag of authenticity. The window shutters actually worked. I thought about our wisteria identification adventure, my throbbing head, the way Tom had already filled his pockets with interesting stones, and how Sarah and I had not once discussed work or school or any of the usual logistics that normally colonise our conversations.

We were not sophisticated travellers. We were a family who had got lost, hit our heads, and been briefly outwitted by a lockbox. But we were here, in this solid stone house that had probably seen worse, and something about that felt exactly right.