I have never been so relieved to see a farmhouse sink in my entire life. There I was, standing in the kitchen of our holiday let in Untergriesbach, Bavaria, clutching a carrier bag that had finally given up the ghost somewhere on the A3, scattering my carefully packed tea bags and a very squashed packet of Jaffa Cakes across the boot of our hire car. My partner, ever the optimist, had declared it "a scenic detour" when we missed the turn for Passau. Three roundabouts and one tense argument about whether Google Maps was having a laugh later, we arrived at the sort of place where you half expect a kindly grandmother to emerge with a tray of Apfelstrudel.

The property itself sits on the edge of the village, and I do mean the edge. You can practically hear the border with Austria holding its breath. The garden was what sold me in the photos, and the garden is what greeted us like an old friend as we stumbled up the gravel path, still bickering about whose fault the Jaffa Cakes were. It is not a fussy garden. There are no Chelsea Flower Show angles here, no carefully raked gravel. Instead there is a lawn that has clearly decided to live its best life, a couple of fruit trees that drop their offerings with casual generosity, and a wooden bench positioned with almost suspicious precision to catch the afternoon sun.

I dumped our bags with the theatrical exhaustion of someone who has done very little actual physical exertion and immediately claimed the bench as my territory for the week. My partner, meanwhile, discovered that the property came with a proper coffee machine and proceeded to conduct what I can only describe as a religious ceremony involving beans from the local roastery in Passau. I did not move from that bench for the better part of three hours. A book I had been carrying around since March, its spine uncracked, finally got its moment. I read perhaps four pages, then dozed, then watched a bee attempt something ambitious with a flower. This, I decided, was the pace I was built for.

The thing about staying somewhere like Untergriesbach is that you quickly realise how much energy you have been wasting on the concept of "making the most of it." The village itself is small enough that you can walk its length before your coffee goes cold. There is a bakery where the woman behind the counter tolerated my GCSE German with the patience of a saint, and a church whose bells mark the hours with such cheerful insistence that you start to feel personally judged for lying in. We did walk to the local shop for provisions, though I use the word "provisions" loosely given that we returned with mostly bread, cheese, and a bottle of something local that the owner recommended with a wink I chose not to interpret.

By day three I had established a routine of almost offensive laziness. Morning coffee in the garden, a slow wander to nowhere in particular, afternoon reading with obligatory dozing, evening cooking with whatever looked promising at the bakery. The kitchen, with its farmhouse sink that had so comfortingly received our chaotic arrival, became the heart of it all. We ate outside whenever the Bavarian weather permitted, which was more often than my British pessimism had prepared me for.

I should mention that we did attempt one walk, setting off with the energy of people who have read too many hiking brochures. We made it to a nearby meadow, admired some cows with the enthusiasm of people who rarely see cows, and promptly returned for a nap. The cows, I felt, judged us less than the church bells did.

What struck me most, sitting in that garden as the week slipped by, was how unfamiliar stillness had become. Not the stillness of waiting for something, or recovering from something, but the simple stillness of being present in a place that asks nothing of you. The fruit trees dropped their bounty. The bees continued their ambitious projects. The coffee machine hummed its morning hymn. And I, for perhaps the first time in years, simply existed within it all, squashed Jaffa Cakes and missed turns forgiven, a book finally getting its due four pages at a time.