I had convinced myself that driving a left-hand-drive hire car through three countries was going to be the hardest part of our trip to Vecoux. Reader, I was wrong. The hardest part was trying to reverse that same car up a narrow lane in Lorraine while my partner made increasingly unhelpful hand gestures and a local chap walking his dog stopped to watch the full performance. I think the dog judged me most.

We had set off from Calais at dawn, fueled by service station coffee and misplaced optimism. The French motorways were blissfully empty, the Champagne-Ardenne countryside rolled past in shades of green I did not think existed outside postcards, and I had only accidentally indicated with the windscreen wipers fourteen times. By the time we crossed into Lorraine, I was practically a local.

Vecoux sits in the Vosges mountains, not far from Remiremont, and our holiday home was one of those traditional stone places with wooden shutters and a garden that looked like it had been arranged by someone with excellent taste and possibly a small inheritance. Nova Sol had promised us character, and character we received. What they could not promise was my ability to navigate the final three hundred metres.

The lane narrowed. Then it narrowed again. A stone wall appeared on one side, a drainage ditch on the other, and somewhere behind me my partner said in that particular tone, "I think there's space." There was not space. There was, at best, a theoretical concept of space. I attempted a three-point turn that became a seven-point turn, then a twelve-point turn, during which I discovered that French country lanes do not have passing places so much as they have sections where you simply close your eyes and hope.

When we finally stopped outside the house, I was sweating through my shirt despite it being barely fifteen degrees. A cat appeared from nowhere and wound between my legs as I tried to unload cases, which I took as either forgiveness or further judgment. The key was in a lockbox, which I opened with the trembling hands of a man who had just survived his own driving.

The door swung inward and I forgot everything. Stone floors, exposed beams, a kitchen that smelled faintly of woodsmoke and previous occupants' good cooking. The sitting room had a wood burner stacked and ready, and windows that looked out towards proper forested hills. My partner immediately claimed the bedroom with the better view, which I accepted because I was still in no position to negotiate anything.

I made tea with the electric kettle, which felt like the most British possible response to mild trauma. We sat on the terrace with our mugs, watching the light change over the Vosges, and I admitted that perhaps I should have paid more attention when my father tried to teach me reversing. My partner admitted that perhaps the hand gestures had not been constructive. The cat, which had followed us inside and made itself comfortable on my lap, admitted nothing.

That first evening we walked barely half a mile to the edge of the village, just to stretch our legs and establish where the nearest boulangerie might be for morning croissants. The air smelled of pine and damp earth and something I eventually identified as wild garlic growing in the verges. A farmer passed us in a tractor and raised two fingers from the steering wheel in that perfect rural French greeting that manages to be both friendly and faintly dismissive.

Back at the house, I built a fire with the enthusiasm of a man who has seen it done on television. It took three attempts, much crumpled newspaper, and a small amount of wounded pride before it caught properly. We ate bread and cheese for supper because we had not yet found the proper shops, and it tasted better than most restaurant meals I have paid too much for.

I fell asleep that night to the sound of an owl somewhere in the trees and the satisfying crackle of dying embers. The drive had been chaos, the arrival worse, and I had been thoroughly humbled by a country lane. But as I lay there in the darkness of a strange house in a strange part of France, I felt that particular contentment that only comes after things have gone slightly wrong and then, eventually, right again.