I have never been brilliant with satnavs, and my first trip to Bray-Dunes proved it in spectacular fashion. Somewhere just past Calais, our friendly robot voice decided that a narrow farm track looked positively inviting. Twenty minutes of reversing past confused-looking cows later, we finally found the proper road, and I had to pretend to the kids that I had planned the scenic route all along. My wife gave me that look. You know the one.

The journey from the Eurotunnel had been smooth enough until that point, just under an hour of flat French countryside and the occasional wind turbine spinning lazily in the sea breeze. Nord-Pas-de-Calais does not shout for attention. It rolls out quietly, all wide skies and sandy soil, and you start to feel your shoulders drop without quite noticing when it happened.

We pulled up to the holiday home late afternoon, and I will be honest, my first thought was relief that the place actually existed. There is always that tiny doubt, is there not, when you book somewhere online? But there it was, a proper little cottage with a terrace that looked made for doing very little indeed. The kids were out of the car before I had even turned the engine off, already arguing about who got which bedroom. Some things travel with you regardless of postcode.

The key was in the lockbox as promised, though I managed to fumble the code three times while a neighbour watched with polite amusement from his garden. Standard holiday performance from me, really. Inside, the place had that particular smell of somewhere kept clean but lived-in, not sterile like a hotel. Wooden furniture, slightly mismatched crockery, a kitchen that announced itself as the heart of the house. My daughter immediately claimed the sofa by spreading her entire collection of stuffed animals across it. Territory marked.

I made the rookie error of attempting a full unpack before exploring. My wife, wiser in these matters, took a cup of tea straight out to the terrace. By the time I joined her, the sun was starting its slow drop towards the dunes, and the light had turned that particular golden colour that makes even a tired parent feel briefly poetic. The kids had found a football somewhere and were kicking it about on the little patch of grass, accompanied by the soundtrack of sibling bickering that passes for harmony in our family.

What struck me first about Bray-Dunes itself was the quiet. Not silence exactly, there were birds and distant voices and the ever-present suggestion of the sea, but a kind of settled calm that felt almost unfamiliar. We are used to holidays that come with activity schedules and queues for attractions. This was something else entirely. The beach was a short stroll away, just over the dunes, and we wandered over before tea to let the kids burn off some ferry energy. The sand was proper stuff, soft and pale, stretching further than I expected. The North Sea was doing its usual grey-green shimmer, not glamorous exactly but honest somehow.

That first evening, we cooked a simple meal with ingredients from the local Carrefour, nothing ambitious, just pasta and salad and bread that was actually fresh. The kitchen had everything we needed, which is rarer than it should be in rental properties. I managed to set off the smoke detector briefly while toasting the bread, because of course I did. The kids found this hilarious. My wife opened wine.

Sitting out on that terrace as darkness crept in, still in our travelling clothes, still slightly dishevelled from the journey, I felt something shift. The mishaps of the day, the satnav disaster, the key fumbling, the smoke alarm, they all seemed part of the texture now rather than frustrations. This is what I always forget about family holidays until I am in them properly. The chaos does not stop, but your relationship to it changes. You stop fighting the small failures and start finding them funny, or at least bearable.

The children fell asleep without the usual negotiations, worn out by sea air and freedom. My wife and I stayed up talking properly for the first time in weeks, not about logistics or schedules, just conversation that wandered where it wanted. The terrace light attracted moths, and somewhere a dog barked lazily. I thought about how rarely we allow ourselves this, the unplanned evening, the lack of agenda, the simple pleasure of being somewhere else together.

I woke early the next morning, slightly stiff from the unfamiliar bed, and made coffee in the quiet kitchen while the rest of the house slept. Through the window, the dunes were visible in the pale morning light, and I could already hear the distant rhythm of the sea. The satnav sat accusingly on the counter, but I smiled at it. Sometimes the wrong turn gets you somewhere worth being.