The sat nav had been telling me to turn left for the last three miles, but there was nothing left to turn into except a field of sugar beet and a very suspicious-looking goat. I was already forty minutes late, flustered, and had just discovered that my carefully packed snacks were actually my partner's vegan protein bars, which taste of despair and cardboard. The mishap, though, came when I finally spotted the sign for Les Hauts Talican and, in my excitement, reversed straight into a bollard that had been minding its own business since approximately 1987. A small crowd of French farmers materialised from nowhere, offered sympathetic shrugs, and one chap patted my roof as if comforting a distressed horse.

Picardy, I decided as I crunched up the gravel drive with my slightly dented pride, was already winning.

Les Hauts Talican sits in the Somme countryside like someone planned it specifically for people who have forgotten how to relax. The house is a proper Picardy longere, all honey-coloured brick and steep roof, with a garden that rolls away from you in that slightly overgrown, very French manner. Not messy, mind. Just... confident. The sort of garden that knows exactly what it is doing even when you do not.

I dumped my bags with the enthusiasm of a woman who has spent six hours on motorways and immediately collapsed onto a weathered wooden chair by the terrace. There was a pear tree somewhere nearby, I could smell it. Somewhere else, a lawnmower droned in that comforting way that means someone else is doing the work. I had brought three books, a sketchpad I cannot draw in, and absolutely no intention of using either for anything productive.

The first morning, I woke to birds I could not name and light that came sideways through the shutters. I made coffee in the small kitchen, burned the first toast because the grill runs hot, and ate the second slice with local butter that tasted of actual fields. Then I did nothing. This sounds simple. It is not. I am the sort of person who checks emails on holiday, who plans walks with military precision, who once made a spreadsheet for a weekend in the Lakes. Here, the nothing crept up on me. I sat in the garden with my terrible coffee and watched a blackbird work over the lawn for worms. Twenty minutes. Forty. Someone's distant tractor became my only soundtrack.

By afternoon I had migrated to a hammock strung between two trees, one of which I suspect was apple. I read three pages of a novel, fell asleep, woke with the book on my face, and considered this a triumph. The garden at Les Hauts Talican has these little pockets - a bench by a hedge, a wrought-iron table under a canopy of something green and climbing - so you can move your laziness around like a snail with property portfolio. I tried them all. Each had slightly different quality of shade, slightly different insect population. I developed opinions about them. This, I told myself, is what slowing down looks like. Developing strong feelings about garden furniture.

My partner, who is better at inactivity than I am, spent hours doing what he called "pottering" and what looked to me like standing very still near tomato plants. We ate lunch of bread and cheese and tiny radishes with their leaves still on, because apparently that is how Picardy does it. We did not talk much. Conversation felt like effort, and effort was not the point.

On the third day, I realised I had not checked my phone since arrival. It was in my bag, possibly dead, possibly staging a revolution. I left it there. The garden had become sufficient. I knew where the sun would be at four o'clock, which corner stayed cool until evening, that a particular patch of lavender near the low stone wall attracted bees with the determination of commuters at rush hour. These were my discoveries. Not cathedrals, not battlefields, not any of the things I would normally have ticked off. Just the shape of a day when you let it alone.

The bollard, I should say, was fine. My car less so, but we reached an understanding. Some holidays change you by showing you something grand. This one changed me by showing me that doing very little, in a garden in Picardy, with burnt toast and a book on your face, might be the most honest thing you do all year.