I should have known the holiday was going to be eventful when the sat-nav decided Elbeuf-sur-Andelle was more of a suggestion than an actual destination. We had been winding through the Seine-Maritime countryside for the best part of three hours, my wife navigating with the confidence of someone who once spent a weekend in Boulogne, and the children asking every four minutes if we were nearly there yet. The answer was always no, until suddenly it was yes, and I missed the turning because I was too busy celebrating.

The lane to the cottage was narrower than my optimism. I edged our laden Renault along, wincing at every bramble that scraped the paintwork, until we reached a clearing and there it was: a proper stone cottage with timber framing, the sort that looks like it belongs on a biscuit tin but with considerably more cobwebs. My wife declared it "absolutely charming" before she had even opened the door. The children had already found a frog in the gravel and were arguing about names.

The key was where the owner said it would be, under a terracotta pot that looked like it had been there since the war. I fumbled it into the lock with the particular incompetence that comes from driving on the wrong side of the road all morning. The door opened with a satisfying creak, and we stepped into a kitchen that smelled faintly of woodsmoke and lavender. A proper farmhouse table dominated the room, scarred with decades of use, and I immediately pictured myself looking rustic and capable with a coffee pot in the morning. The reality, as ever, would prove rather different.

I made the mistake of claiming the largest bedroom before inspecting the bathroom situation. One toilet between four of us, and the hot water tank that the welcome folder described as "intimate" turned out to be French for "you will need to stagger your showers like a military operation." My son had already claimed the sofa bed in the living room, which meant he could fall asleep watching French television he did not understand. Small victories.

By late afternoon we had unpacked with the chaotic energy of people who do not know where anything should go. The children discovered the garden proper, which sloped down to a small stream, and returned with muddy knees and a renewed interest in the frog, which they had now named Gerald and insisted was "definitely living with us." My wife opened the windows to let in the country air and promptly let in three flies and what I am fairly certain was a small bat. She dealt with this with admirable calm, by which I mean she shut herself in the bedroom until I had restored order.

I found the barbecue behind the shed, rusted but functional, and felt an absurd surge of masculine pride at the prospect of cooking meat outdoors. The children helped by asking repeatedly when dinner would be ready and dropping the baguette I had sent them to fetch from the village. We ate at half past nine, which felt impossibly continental, watching the light fade over the apple trees that bordered the garden. Gerald had apparently moved on, or possibly been eaten by a larger frog. The children took this in their stride, being more interested in whether they could have another pain au chocolat.

That first night I lay awake longer than expected, listening to unfamiliar creaks and the distant sound of the stream. The cottage was warm though, and solid, and somewhere in the chaos of arrival I had already stopped checking my phone for work emails. Tomorrow we would explore properly, find the boulangerie I had driven past three times, perhaps attempt a walk without anyone complaining about their wellies. But for now, there was just the darkness and the knowledge that we had arrived somewhere that felt, already, like it might let us breathe a little. The bat, mercifully, had found its own way out.