I should have known the Sat Nav was plotting against me the moment it tried to send us through a field outside Boulogne. Three hours from Calais, two wrong turns, and one heated debate about whether I could actually read a map later, we finally spotted the sign for Saint Denoeux. Relief lasted approximately four seconds, which is precisely how long it took me to reverse confidently into a hedge while trying to park.

The gite itself sat at the end of a narrow lane, all red brick and proper Flemish character, with a garden that looked like it had been trimmed with nail scissors. My partner gave me that look. You know the one. The "you said this would be relaxing" look. I busied myself unloading cases while pretending the hedge incident had never happened.

The key was exactly where the owner said it would be, which felt like a small miracle given my track record that afternoon. The front door opened with that satisfying weight old doors have, and we stepped into a hallway that smelled faintly of wood polish and yesterday's bread. To the left, a sitting room with beams so low I immediately cracked my head on one while pointing out how charming they were. My partner laughed. I laughed too, though it came out slightly pained and through gritted teeth.

The kitchen was proper country French, all terracotta tiles and a cooker that looked like it had seen several decades of serious use. I opened the fridge out of habit, finding nothing but a small welcome bottle of local beer and a note wishing us bienvenue. The beer was gone within minutes. I am not ashamed.

Upstairs, the bedrooms sloped in that way old houses do, floors uneven enough to make you feel slightly drunk even when sober. I dumped our bags in the master room and immediately tripped over a loose floorboard I would later learn to avoid through painful repetition. The window looked out over the garden and beyond to flat farmland stretching towards the coast. Somewhere in the distance, a church bell rang. It all felt impossibly French, in the best possible way.

By now the light was fading, so we made the executive decision to find food rather than attempt cooking in an unfamiliar kitchen while hungry and slightly hysterical. The village of Saint Denoeux itself is tiny, blink-and-you-miss-it territory, but Saint-Martin-Choquel sits just up the road with a proper boulangerie. We arrived five minutes after closing, because of course we did, and had to make do with a slightly desperate supermarket sweep in Montreuil-sur-Mer instead.

Back at the gite, we ate baguette and cheese at the kitchen table, me still slightly sulking about the hedge and my head and the bakery timing. But then my partner poured some wine, and we sat there with the windows open, listening to nothing much at all, and I felt that particular holiday feeling creep in despite myself. The chaos of arrival was already becoming funny rather than frustrating, which is how these things always seem to go.

I woke once in the night, disoriented by unfamiliar darkness and the absolute silence of proper countryside. For a moment I could not remember where I was. Then I heard my partner's breathing, and the creak of the old house settling, and smiled into my pillow. Tomorrow we would explore properly, find that bakery at the right time, maybe walk towards the Canche river if the weather held. But for now, surrounded by slightly crooked walls and the faint smell of coffee from the kitchen below, I was exactly where I wanted to be.