I have never been particularly gifted at reading maps, which is a polite way of saying that my sense of direction is about as reliable as a chocolate teapot. This became abundantly clear somewhere on the A5, just past Freiburg, when I realised I had been confidently following signs for Basel for a solid twenty minutes. My partner, who had been dozing in the passenger seat, woke to find us heading toward Switzerland with a boot full of German groceries and a tank of petrol that suddenly felt rather precious.

The turning circle on a rented Fiat Panda is, I can now confirm, not designed for motorway panic. We eventually found our way back, though not before a tense moment at a services where I attempted to ask for directions in what I believed was passable German but was apparently interpreted as a request for medical assistance. A kind woman pointed us toward Lorrach with the careful patience of someone guiding a lost toddler.

By the time we reached the holiday home, the Black Forest darkness had settled in properly. Not the polite suburban darkness I am accustomed to, but the thick, pine-scented kind that makes you feel suddenly very aware of how small your car headlights are. The property sat at the end of a narrow lane, half-hidden by trees that seemed to lean in with theatrical curiosity. I could just make out the traditional timber framing, the sort that makes British holiday cottages look positively half-hearted about their own history.

The mishap, when it came, was entirely my own doing. In my eagerness to stretch my legs and escape the car, I managed to trip over the single visible root in a three-metre radius, sending my phone skittering across the gravel and my dignity scattering somewhere into the undergrowth. I lay there for a moment, staring up at a sky improbably full of stars, wondering if this was how all proper holidays began. My partner's face appeared above me, not with concern exactly, but with the particular expression of someone who has seen this sort of thing before and packed the arnica cream accordingly.

The owner had left the key in a small metal box, the code for which I had written on a scrap of paper now slightly bloodied from my gravel encounter. Inside, the house smelled of wood polish and something faintly herbal, perhaps from the small garden visible in the morning light. The furniture was solid in that unapologetic German way, the kind of pieces that will outlast several generations of my clumsiness. I limped through to the kitchen and filled the kettle, suddenly aware of how completely quiet it was. Not the absence-of-traffic quiet of a British village, but something deeper, the held-breath quiet of proper forest.

I stood at the window with my tea, watching the darkness hold its shape against the glass, and felt something in my shoulders begin to loosen. The map mishap, the root, the grazed palm of my hand - they all seemed, in that moment, like the necessary toll for arriving somewhere that felt genuinely removed from everything. I had come chasing the Black Forest of childhood stories, of gingerbread houses and cautionary tales, and found instead something better: a place that did not perform for tourists but simply existed, patient and slightly amused, waiting to see what I might make of it.

The morning would bring the proper exploration, the discovery of how close we sat to the town centre, the realisation that the bakery was within walking distance if my knee permitted. But that first night, nursing my minor wounds and listening to my partner's already-settled breathing from the next room, I understood that the best arrivals are rarely graceful. They are stumbled into, slightly bruised, entirely unprepared. I finished my tea and left the cup in the sink, too tired to find the proper cupboard, and climbed the narrow stairs to bed feeling, despite everything, rather pleased with myself.