I should have known the Sat Nav was up to no good the moment it tried to send me through a field of sugar beet. There I was, trundling down a lane in Picardy that grew narrower by the metre, convinced I was taking the scenic route to our holiday cottage in Frise. The scenic route, as it turned out, involved reversing half a mile past a very judgmental donkey and eventually arriving at the Frise cottage with what I can only describe as a profound sense of agricultural accomplishment.

The cottage itself sat at the end of a track, flanked by nothing but fields and the sort of silence that makes you realise how loud your own breathing is. My partner gave me that look, the one that says "we'll discuss the donkey later," and we hauled our bags inside. First impressions? Imagine a place that smells faintly of woodsmoke and old stone, with beams so low that I immediately developed a stoop that would make a Victorian schoolteacher proud. The kitchen had a proper range, the sort that demands you cook something hearty or feel its metallic disapproval.

We had planned, of course. There were lists. Lists of chateaux, lists of battlefields, lists of recommended restaurants in Amiens that required a forty-minute drive. The lists lasted precisely until the following morning, when we set out for what was meant to be a brief stroll and promptly got ourselves magnificently lost.

The path behind the cottage dissolved into a network of tracks that seemed to shift when you weren't looking. One moment we were following what appeared to be a legitimate trail, the next we were standing in a clearing surrounded by poplars, with no earthly idea which direction we'd come from. My phone had surrendered to the void, displaying that little spinning wheel of doom that means you're officially on your own.

It was glorious.

We stumbled upon a farm where an elderly woman was selling cheese from her kitchen table, her French so rapid and regional that I understood perhaps every fifth word. Through a combination of pointing, apologetic smiling, and what I can only describe as interpretive mime, we acquired a wedge of something pungent and wonderful, plus directions that involved a great deal of gesturing at hedgerows. She seemed genuinely puzzled that anyone would want to walk for pleasure. The French, I have learned, have a very practical relationship with the countryside.

The cheese became our compass. We ate it perched on a gate somewhere, watching a heron work the drainage canal with the patience of a creature that has never once worried about being lost. These canals, we discovered, crisscross the Somme valley like veins, remnants of a landscape shaped by water and war and centuries of quiet agricultural persistence. We followed one for what felt like hours, passing through hamlets that don't appear on any map I own, places where the houses huddle together as if sharing a secret.

By late afternoon we emerged, slightly dazed, onto a road I vaguely recognised. We were perhaps two miles from the cottage. We had been walking for six hours. My partner had twigs in her hair. I had developed an inexplicable limp that came and went according to whether anyone was watching.

That evening we abandoned the lists entirely. We drove, somewhat aimlessly, until a hand-painted sign advertising "frites" led us to a village fete we had no business attending. We ate chips from paper cones and watched locals play boules with the solemn concentration of Olympic athletes. Someone gave us beer. No one asked why we were there.

The rest of the week followed this pattern. We found a ruined abbey by following a dog that looked like it knew where it was going. We discovered a bakery in what appeared to be someone's garage, producing croissants that ruined all other croissants for me permanently. We spent an afternoon in a marshland reserve, watching harriers drift over reeds, after a wrong turn on what was definitely, absolutely, the correct road back from the supermarket.

On our final morning, I stood in the cottage garden with my coffee, watching mist lift off the fields. I thought about all the things we hadn't seen, the chateaux and cathedrals that remained ticked but unchecked on those abandoned lists. Then a deer stepped out of the hedge, regarded me with complete indifference, and vanished again.

Some holidays, I realised, are not about where you intended to go. They're about the donkeys you reverse past, the cheese you mime for, the moments when you stop trying to be somewhere else and simply let the place show you what it wants to show you. We left Frise with muddy boots, a half-eaten wedge of farm cheese, and absolutely no photographs of anything famous. I have never been more satisfied with a holiday in my life.