Right then, so there we were, bombing down the A87 towards St Jean de Monts, me navigating with all the competence of a man who once got lost in his own garden shed. My partner was driving, which was just as well, because I had somehow managed to book a ferry crossing for the wrong week. Discovered this at Portsmouth, didn't I? Standing there with our croissants from MandS, watching the correct ferry sail away without us. Two hundred quid later and a lot of creative language, we were on the next one, me vowing never to book holidays after three pints again.

The gite itself was one of those proper Novasol numbers, all timber framing and optimistic promises of "rustic charm." We found it down a lane that seemed to narrow with every metre, convinced we were about to become that couple in the local paper who blocked a tractor route for six hours. But we made it, scraped the hire car on precisely nothing, and tumbled out into the Vendee sunshine.

Within ten minutes, we had met Bernard.

Bernard lived in the neighbouring property, a chap of perhaps seventy with the sort of tan that suggested he had been outdoors since approximately 1973. He appeared over the fence like a meerkat, cigarette dangling, and announced that he had watched us arrive. "You took the wrong turning at the boulangerie," he said, in English far better than my French. "Everyone does. The baker, he moves the sign when he is bored." This was delivered with a shrug that suggested such municipal chaos was entirely normal, perhaps even entertaining.

We got talking, as you do, and Bernard turned out to be a retired oyster farmer from further down the coast. He had opinions about oysters, naturally, but also about Brexit, about the English habit of apologising for everything, and about our gite specifically. "The shower," he said, pausing for dramatic effect, "it sings." He meant literally. Something about the pipes, some harmonic resonance, meant that running hot water produced a noise like a depressed whale. "The Germans last year, they thought it was intentional. Very zen, they said." He flicked his ash and grinned.

The next morning, seeking coffee and redemption, we walked into St Jean de Monts proper and found ourselves at the market. Here we encountered Claudette, who ran a stall selling those terrible tourist T-shirts that everyone pretends not to want. She sized us up immediately. "English," she declared. "You want the ones with the donkeys? The English always want the donkeys." We did not want the donkeys, but somehow left with three, me too embarrassed to explain that we had no children to inflict them upon. Claudette threw in a keyring for free, "because your face, it is so confused."

That afternoon, attempting to look like competent holidaymakers, we cycled to the salt marshes. There we found Marcel, a wiry man in waders who was harvesting sea salt the way his grandfather had. He spoke no English, I spoke barely functional French, and yet we communicated perfectly through the universal language of enthusiastic pointing. He showed us how the salt formed, how the wind mattered, how the whole thing was basically a conspiracy between sun and patience. At one point he held up a handful of grey salt and said something I did not understand, then laughed so hard he nearly fell in a channel. My partner thinks he made a joke about English cooking. I choose to believe it was about the weather.

By evening, we were back at the gite, shower-singing away, when Bernard reappeared with a bottle of Muscadet and the declaration that we were now "his project." He had decided we needed educating in proper Vendee life, which apparently involved a lot of sitting, a lot of drinking, and occasional pronouncements about the superiority of local potatoes. "The soil," he said, gesturing vaguely at the ground, "it is different. You cannot explain. You must eat." We ate. They were, annoyingly, excellent potatoes.

Sitting there as the light faded, me slightly drunk and very full, I found myself reflecting on how completely wrong my approach to holidays usually is. I plan everything, panic about bookings, stress about ferries, and somehow still end up wearing a donkey T-shirt. Yet the actual joy comes from these accidental encounters, from Bernard's conspiratorial gardening updates and Claudette's ruthless salesmanship and Marcel's untranslatable marsh humour. I had spent the whole journey worrying about the destination, when the whole point was clearly the strange, generous, slightly mad people you meet when you finally stop trying so hard to get everything right.

The shower started its whale song again. Bernard raised his glass to it, as if to an old friend. I raised mine too, thinking that perhaps getting the ferry wrong was the best thing I had done in years.