I have never been so relieved to see a sign for a village in my life. Three hours from Caen, two wrong turns, one argument with a sat nav that insisted "Creances" was pronounced "Cray-ances," and a spectacular moment in Alencon where I opened the car door straight into a bollard. The bollard won. The door now makes a noise like a wounded seal every time I open it.

But then there it was. The gite. Stone walls, blue shutters, that particular hush you only get in the Normandy countryside when even the birds seem to be having a post-lunch doze. I stepped out of the car and immediately smelled woodsmoke from somewhere down the lane. My stomach rumbled with the theatrical timing of a pantomime villain.

The owners had left a bottle of cider and a note. The cider was excellent. The note said the Thursday market in Creances was "not to be missed." It was Tuesday. I looked at the kitchen - proper cooker, decent knives, a fridge that actually worked - and made a decision. I would shop like a local. I would cook like a local. I would, in short, eat my way through this holiday with the dedication of a man who had spent six hours in a Renault Clio with a broken door.

First evening, I walked to the nearest bar-tabac, which was essentially someone's front room with a coffee machine and three men watching football. I ordered a demi-pression and a croque-monsieur. The barman looked at me with what I can only describe as gentle pity. The croque arrived ten minutes later, molten and furious, the ham thick enough to require actual chewing. I ate it at the counter, watching the football I did not understand, and felt something unknot in my chest.

The next morning I found the boulangerie. This is not difficult in Normandy. They are everywhere, like a benevolent conspiracy. I bought a ficelle, still warm, and tore off the end walking back to the gite. Butter. Jam. Coffee that tasted of something. I sat in the garden and ate with my fingers, getting crumbs on a jumper I would wear for three more days.

Wednesday I attempted the market in Lessay, which I had been told was "better" than Creances. Better is a relative term. It was enormous, chaotic, full of shouting men selling fish that still had the resigned look of recent capture. I bought mussels, because I am an optimist. I bought a chicken, because I am a coward. I bought vegetables from a woman who corrected my pronunciation of "carotte" three times, each correction delivered with increasing warmth, as if we were becoming friends through my incompetence.

The mussels died in white wine and shallots that evening. I mean this literally and culinarily. They opened like obedient children, plump and orange and perfect. I ate them with the ficelle's successor, mopping the broth until the bowl was clean enough to skip washing up. The chicken I roasted the next day with the carrots, which were indeed superior to anything I had bought in England. The woman had been right. She was right about the carrots, right about my accent, probably right about other things I had not asked.

Thursday came. The Creances market. I had built it up in my mind, this local market, this authentic experience. It was smaller than Lessay. Friendlier, somehow. An old man sold me cheese without speaking, just pointing and nodding, a system I found deeply soothing. I bought camembert that smelled like it had opinions. I bought butter with salt crystals that crunched between your teeth. I bought cider from a woman who poured me a tasting glass at ten in the morning, and I drank it, and I bought three bottles.

That evening I attempted an omelette with the market eggs, the salt butter, nothing else. It failed. I have never made a good omelette. This one was pale and anxious, folding over itself like a worried blanket. I ate it anyway, with bread, with cheese, with a glass of the morning's cider. It was one of the best meals I have ever had.

The pub in Creances - I should mention the pub, because I went back three times - served moules-frites on Friday nights. The mussels came in a metal pot, the fries in a paper cone, the mayonnaise in a ramekin with a tiny spoon. I sat outside with a family from Paris who spoke to me in slow, careful English while I responded in slower, less careful French. We understood almost nothing. We shared fries. The father insisted on buying me a digestif, something apple-based that burned like forgiveness.

Saturday I cooked again. The last of the chicken became stock. The stock became soup with the last of the vegetables, the heel of the ficelle's third successor toasted and floated on top. I ate it watching the light change over the garden, thinking about the door I would need to explain to the hire company, the bollard I would never see again, the omelette I would continue to fail at.

The market in Creances had taught me something I could not quite name. Not about cooking, exactly. About patience, perhaps. About buying less and paying attention more. About the old man and his cheese, the woman and her cider, the barman and his pitying croque-monsieur. About eating at a counter with strangers, the football flickering, the beer perfectly cold.

I left on Sunday morning with the wounded seal door, three bottles of cider wrapped in jumpers, and a bag of salt butter that would not survive the journey home. It melted slightly in the car. I found it hours later, soft and yielding, and spread it on bread from a service station near Dieppe.

Even that was good. That is the thing about Normandy. Even the failures taste of something worth remembering.