I have never been so relieved to see a gravel driveway in my life. Three hours after leaving Calais, two wrong turns, and one spectacular argument with a sat nav that insisted Roisel was somewhere in the middle of a beetroot field, we finally crunched to a halt outside a proper red-brick farmhouse with shutters that looked like they had seen off at least a century of Picardy weather.

The mishap, because there is always one, happened at a petrol station just past Amiens. I had been practising my GCSE French for weeks, rehearsing pleasantries about the weather and enquiries about local cheeses. What I had not prepared for was the sheer panic of realising our hire car took diesel, not petrol, and that I had already lifted the wrong nozzle with the confidence of a man who definitely knew what he was doing. The attendant, a chap with magnificent eyebrows and the patience of a saint, gently removed it from my hand and pointed to the other pump. My wife found this hilarious. My children found it mortifying. I found a new appreciation for French customer service.

By the time we reached the property, I was ready to collapse into the nearest chair and not move until spring. The farmhouse, though, had other ideas. It demanded attention. The key was exactly where the instructions said, tucked in a little metal box that required the dexterity of a safecracker to open. My youngest, who had been complaining about leg room for the final forty minutes, suddenly became an expert locksmith and had it clicking open in seconds. Children are useful like that, but only when it suits them.

Stepping inside was like walking into someone's grandmother's front room, in the best possible way. There was a proper wood-burning stove that looked like it had warmed generations of damp walkers, and furniture with the satisfying bulk of actual wood rather than the flat-pack variety I had assembled badly at home. The kitchen had a table big enough for a family feast, or more realistically, for spreading out maps we would not use, bread we would definitely eat, and the inevitable jigsaw puzzle that someone had optimistically packed.

My first job, obviously, was to make tea. This is non-negotiable after any journey, particularly one involving diesel-related humiliation. The kettle took its time, as kettles do in old properties, giving me a moment to stand at the window and actually look at where we had landed. Fields rolled away in that particular shade of green that only seems to exist in northern France, broken up by hedgerows and the occasional copse of trees. A tractor was doing something purposeful in the distance. Birds were making a tremendous racket in the bushes. It was all gloriously, determinedly rural.

The children had already disappeared upstairs to claim bedrooms, which meant negotiations were coming. My wife was inspecting the garden, which was substantial and slightly wild, the kind of garden that suggests you might find interesting things if you poked about long enough. I could see her already planning evening drinks outside, probably with some local cider, definitely with that expression she gets when she knows she has chosen well and is waiting for me to admit it.

I did not admit it straight away. I was too busy discovering that the back door stuck slightly, that the floorboards had character, and that someone had left a helpful note about the boiler that managed to be both reassuring and faintly alarming. This is the joy of a farmhouse stay, I am learning. It is not polished perfection. It is someone else's rhythms, their slightly wonky shelves, their choice of curtains, all waiting for you to settle into and temporarily make your own.

By evening, the stove was crackling, someone had located a working television with approximately four channels, and we had eaten bread and cheese at that big table while discussing whether tomorrow might involve a walk, a village exploration, or simply doing very little at all. The sat nav sat ignored in the car. The wrong-turn beetroot fields felt like a different country entirely.

We had arrived, more or less in one piece, and I was already dreading the journey home.