The sat-nav had been insisting for a good forty minutes that we were "arriving at destination" whilst simultaneously guiding us down what I can only describe as a glorified tractor path. My partner, ever the optimist, kept saying "it must be just round this bend." It was not just round any of the bends. Not the first, not the third, and certainly not the seventh, by which point I had developed what I can only call a meaningful relationship with a very patient cow who watched us pass three times from the same field. We were, in the time-honoured tradition of British holidaymakers abroad, utterly lost in rural Normandy with a boot full of cheese and absolutely no dignity.

October had arrived with its customary damp enthusiasm, and the countryside wore it beautifully. The beech trees flanking every lane had turned that particular burnt copper that makes you want to wrap yourself in something woollen and pretend you're in a French film. The rain came in soft, persistent waves rather than proper downpours, the kind that doesn't stop you doing anything but somehow gets into everything anyway. I had packed one umbrella, which lived in the car, and one raincoat, which lived in my imagination apparently, because I definitely hadn't brought it.

When we finally spotted the proper turning, marked by a stone pillar so weathered it looked like a suggestion rather than instruction, the light was doing that golden autumn thing where everything seems briefly forgiving. The property sat at the edge of Lyons-la-Foret, close enough to wander into the village for bread but tucked among trees that rustled with the particular sound of October, all dry leaves and damp wood. The building itself had that satisfying solidity of old Normandy construction, thick walls and small windows that spoke of winters far harsher than the one we were easing into.

The key was where promised, in a little lockbox that required the dexterity of a safecracker and the patience of a saint. I possessed neither, particularly after three hours of accidental rural touring. My partner, whose fingers apparently work better in cold weather, managed it on her second attempt whilst I made supportive noises and tried not to look like someone who had recently argued with a sat-nav in raised voices.

Stepping inside, the first thing that struck was the smell. Not the mustiness I'd half-expected from an old property breathing through its autumn closure, but woodsmoke from the stove someone had thoughtfully prepared, and something else, something green and living. The previous visitors had left a bowl of apples on the kitchen table, local varieties by the look of them, slightly imperfect and utterly fragrant. The season had followed us in, in the best possible way.

The garden was doing that glorious October collapse, dahlias still hanging on with slightly bedraggled determination, roses producing their final, smaller blooms. Everything dripped. Everything glistened. I stood on the terrace with a cup of tea made from water that took an age to run hot, and watched a squirrel make an absolute hash of burying something in the lawn. It dug, it reconsidered, it moved six inches, it dug again. I felt an immediate kinship. We were both improvising, both slightly out of our depth, both making the best of seasonal circumstances that demanded a certain flexibility.

That first evening, we walked into the village proper, timing it badly so that everything was shutting but not quite shut. The boulangerie had two baguettes left, slightly cooled, which the woman wrapped with the resigned efficiency of someone who knew we were the sort of people who couldn't organise ourselves around proper French hours. We bought them anyway, and cheese from the small epicerie that stayed open later, and ate in the garden under the last grey light, wrapped in blankets we'd found in a chest, watching the mist gather between the trees in a way that felt almost theatrical.

I kept thinking about that squirrel. About how autumn strips things back to essentials, how it demands you slow down and adjust your expectations. The property wasn't trying to be summer-bright or spring-fresh. It was offering something else entirely: the particular pleasure of being warm inside while weather happens against the windows, of early darkness that encourages early wine, of mornings when you wake to fog so thick the garden has disappeared and you might as well have another coffee and wait for revelation.

The mishap of our arrival, the comedy of our circling, had become by evening something almost necessary. We had earned our place there, fought through seasonal backroads and our own incompetence to arrive at exactly the right moment, when the year was turning and the world felt quietly dramatic. I went to sleep that first night to the sound of rain returning, proper Normandy rain, and felt something loosen in my chest that had been tight since summer ended without my really noticing.

Some arrivals are smooth. This one had been ridiculous. But sitting in the damp garden the next morning, watching mist lift from the meadow beyond the hedge in slow, theatrical revelation, I couldn't imagine wanting it any other way. The season had shaped everything, had made the getting there part of the being there, had turned a simple holiday let into something that felt, for those first few hours, quietly transformative. I was still slightly damp, still slightly lost in myself if no longer in geography, and absolutely ready to see what the rest of the week might unfold.