I have never been so relieved to see a set of traffic lights as I was when we finally crawled into Saint Jean de Monts. Seven hours from Caen, two squabbling children, one increasingly desperate game of I Spy, and a sat nav that seemed personally offended by the concept of the N237. By the time we reached the holiday park, I had developed what I can only describe as a profound spiritual connection with the service station croque monsieur I had eaten somewhere near Angers. Not a healthy connection, mind you. More of a regretful haunting.

The mishap, because there is always a mishap, occurred approximately three minutes after parking. I was so eager to stretch my legs that I flung open the car door with theatrical abandon, directly into a low stone wall that I had somehow failed to notice despite its being roughly the size of a modest bungalow. The door bounced back with a clang that made a nearby French gentleman drop his baguette. I mean actually drop it. In slow motion. He looked at me with the kind of patient disappointment I normally reserve for my own children when they try to flush Lego. I muttered "pardon" approximately fourteen times, collected my dignity from the gravel, and limped toward reception.

The cottage itself, when we finally located it among the winding lanes of pine trees, was exactly the sort of place that makes you forgive a bruised shin and a bruised ego. Ours was one of those cheerful wooden numbers with a proper covered terrace, the kind that practically demands you sit out with a glass of something chilled while the children exhaust themselves on communal grass. My wife immediately began her traditional ritual of opening every cupboard and drawer with the focused intensity of an archaeologist discovering a new tomb. I performed my own sacred duty: claiming the best deck chair before the children could repurpose it as a fort.

The first evening, we did precisely what one ought to do in Pays de la Loire. We walked. Saint Jean de Monts has this wonderful flatness to it, this gentle promenade that unwinds toward the beach without demanding any particular athletic commitment from legs that have been folded into a Renault Scenic since dawn. The salt smell hit us about two hundred metres before the sand became visible, and I felt something in my shoulders actually release. The children bolted toward the water with the predictable chaos of puppies off leads, while my wife and I adopted that particular strolling pace that says we are technically supervising but also, crucially, not running.

We ate mussels that night at a beachfront place where the waiter tolerated my GCSE French with the weary generosity of a man who has heard worse. Much worse, presumably, from me specifically if I return. The children discovered that they do, against all previous household evidence, enjoy chips when served in a paper cone by the sea. We walked back through streets still warm from the day's sun, past ice cream shops doing brisk trade with sun-pinked families identical to our own.

Lying in the unfamiliar quiet of the cottage later, listening to my son's theatrical snoring from the next room, I found myself thinking about that slammed car door. About the dropped baguette and the croque monsieur and the sat nav's sulky rerouting. The small humiliations of travel that somehow, perversely, become the stories you actually keep. The perfect holidays blur together. The slightly chaotic ones stick. I had arrived expecting relaxation, which arrived eventually, but I had not expected the peculiar joy of being temporarily bad at everything in a place that simply did not mind.

The pine trees whispered something in French that I chose to interpret as welcome. I believed it.