I should have known the holiday was going to be characterful when my SatNav decided "L'etang Bertrand" sounded more like a sneeze than a destination. There I was, crawling down a lane barely wide enough for a determined bicycle, convinced I'd find myself in someone's courtyard or, worse, their duck pond. The name does rather suggest water features, after all.

The mishap came at a junction near Bricquebec, where I stopped to consult a map like a proper pilgrim. A chap on a rust-eaten tractor appeared from nowhere, gesturing with the kind of enthusiasm usually reserved for directing aircraft. I wound down the window. He spoke rapid Norman French, I offered my best schoolboy attempt, and somehow we established I needed to go back the way I'd come. I'd been three hundred yards from the place for ten minutes, circling like a confused pigeon. He found this hilarious. I found it less so, but his wheezing laugh was so infectious I ended up chuckling too, mostly at my own uselessness.

The property itself sits in that satisfyingly scruffy countryside where Normandy does its best impression of itself. Half-timbered bits, a proper garden that hasn't met a strimmer in earnest, and that particular hush you only get when you're genuinely rural. Madame Fournier, who manages the keys, arrived ten minutes after I did. She'd been "just finishing something," which turned out to be a glass of cider with her neighbour. No apology, just a practical handshake and a thorough inspection of my driving licence, as if I might have stolen the car specifically to impersonate a holidaymaker.

She showed me round with the brisk efficiency of someone who has done this countless times but still notices details. The boiler was "a bit chatty," the oven "has moods," and the back door required "a special relationship" to open. I asked what that meant. She demonstrated a particular lift-and-shove manoeuvre that looked like a country dance move. "You must court it," she said, deadpan. I practised twice under her supervision. She pronounced me "almost acceptable."

That evening I walked to the village, if you can call a scattering of houses and a church a village. The boulangerie was closed, naturally, but the bar-tabac was open and populated by three men who appeared to have grown organically from their stools. I ordered a demi and stood there like a lemon until the oldest one, who introduced himself as Marcel, asked if I was "the English with the lost car." News travels through hedgerows here, apparently. I admitted it. He translated for his companions, who made that particular French noise of amused disdain, a sort of puffed-cheek exhalation that conveys volumes.

Marcel had been a dairy farmer for forty years, "until the cows became too expensive to argue with." His friend Henri had driven lorries to Portsmouth once, "terrible food," and the third man, who never gave his name, simply grunted in agreement or disagreement, it was genuinely hard to tell. They asked about Brexit with the resigned curiosity of people asking about a distant relative's divorce. Marcel's summary: "Politicians. All the same. We have Macron, you have your ones. We all suffer."

I walked back in the gloaming, slightly cider-happy, practising my door courtship. It struck me that I'd spent months planning this escape, researching properties, imagining solitude and restoration. Instead I'd found myself immediately folded into other people's stories, my incompetence turned into social currency. There's something deeply humbling about being the village entertainment, and something rather wonderful too. The door succumbed on my fourth attempt. I made tea with the chatty boiler and sat listening to nothing much, feeling already like I'd been there far longer than a few hours, and that the place was quietly waiting to see what sort of character I might become.