I should have known the holiday was going to be eventful when I got my left and right mixed up before we'd even reached the bridge. There we were, crawling through Nantes in a hire car that smelled faintly of pine air freshener and regret, and I confidently directed my partner to take the exit for Rennes instead of the one for Noirmoutier. Cue twenty minutes of silent driving while I studied the map with the intensity of someone defusing a bomb.

The Passage du Gois was our intended route, that famous tidal causeway that disappears under the Atlantic twice daily like a particularly unreliable magic trick. We'd timed it badly, of course. The water was already lapping at the edges, and a small queue of optimistic cars had formed, everyone pretending this was completely normal. A man in a Citroen ahead of us got out to take a photo of the rising tide, as if he might need evidence for his insurance claim. We sat there, engine running, me making cheerful comments about "adventure" while my partner's knuckles went white on the steering wheel.

When we finally trundled across and onto the island proper, I felt that particular relief of reaching somewhere that immediately feels different. Noirmoutier has that quality, doesn't it? The salt in the air, the pine trees leaning away from the prevailing wind, the sudden quiet after the mainland bustle. Barbatre sits on the northern edge, and our holiday home was down one of those sandy lanes that make you question whether your sat nav has finally lost the plot entirely.

The mishap, when it came, was entirely my fault. I'd been boasting about my packing efficiency for the entire journey. Everything neatly labelled, I'd claimed. So organised, I'd said. Which made it rather embarrassing when I unlocked the boot to discover I'd left our entire food shop in the car park at the supermarket in Nantes. All of it. The wine, the cheese, the baguettes I'd carefully selected with the seriousness of a sommelier choosing a vintage. Gone. Probably being enjoyed by some lucky French pensioner or, more likely, sitting in a trolley bay slowly going off in the afternoon heat.

I stood there in the sandy driveway, key in hand, laughing in that slightly unhinged way that comes from genuine absurdity. My partner just leaned against the car and shook his head. We'd have to find a local shop, eat out, make do. The holiday would begin with improvisation rather than the carefully planned aperitif I'd imagined.

But here's the thing about first impressions: they settle in unexpected ways. The house itself was simple and welcoming, all pale wood and practical shutters, with a garden that backed onto marshland where I could already hear curlews calling. The afternoon light came through the windows in that particular Atlantic way, watery and generous. I found myself not minding about the lost groceries, not really. There was something freeing about starting from nothing, about having to walk to the boulangerie in Barbatre village the next morning for still-warm bread, about discovering the small supermarket near the coast that sold local oysters and a Muscadet that cost embarrassingly little.

That evening, we sat on the terrace with takeaway pizza from a place in La Gueriniere, which wasn't the sophisticated meal I'd planned but tasted of salt air and relief and the particular pleasure of finally stopping. I watched the sky turn that soft pink you get near the coast, listened to the wind in the pines, and thought about how holidays rarely begin the way you expect them to, and perhaps that's rather the point.