I have never been so relieved to see a satnav give up as I was somewhere on a winding lane above Welschensteinach. "Recalculating," it said, for the seventh time in ten minutes, before finally falling silent in what I can only describe as a sulk. My wife was doing that patient breathing she does. The kids had stopped bickering about whose turn it was for the tablet and had moved on to a unified front of needing the loo. And I, in my wisdom, had decided we did not need to stop for directions because "how hard can a Black Forest village be to find?"

The answer, apparently, involves three hairpin bends, a very judgmental goat, and a moment where our estate car and a tractor had what I can only call an intimate conversation on a bridge clearly built for neither.

But then we crested the final hill, and there it was. The cottage sat among firs with that particular stillness you only get in proper woodland, the kind that makes you immediately lower your voice without knowing why. My first thought was that it looked like something from a children's book, all dark beams and neat shutters, the sort of place where you half expect a friendly badger to be doing the gardening.

The key was in the lockbox exactly where the instructions said, which felt like a small miracle given my navigational performance. I fumbled the code twice because I was trying to watch a red squirrel simultaneously. The door opened with a satisfying weight, and we stepped into that particular smell of old wood and clean linen that makes you think, yes, this is why we left home.

The kids bolted past me to claim bedrooms, which meant thirty seconds of democracy followed by the inevitable treaty negotiations. My wife headed straight for the kitchen, because she knows me well enough to check whether there is a proper kettle before anything else. There was. A substantial one. I felt genuinely moved.

I will be honest about the mishap that dominated our first hour. In my eagerness to be helpful, I attempted to light the wood-burning stove using what I believed to be firelighters but were, in fact, something the previous guests had left behind that turned out to be bath salts. The resulting smell was not unpleasant, exactly, but deeply confusing. My son asked if we were having a spa day. My daughter wanted to know why the living room smelled like her grandmother's bathroom. I retreated to unpack the car with what dignity remained.

By late afternoon, the proper fire was going, thanks to my wife's intervention and my promise never to touch the stove unsupervised again. We sat with mugs of something warm while the kids discovered that the garden had a small stream at the bottom, which immediately became the most important waterway in Europe. I watched them from the window, realising I had not checked my phone in two hours and feeling slightly panicked before choosing not to care.

Dinner was simple things from the village shop we had passed, bread and cheese and ham, eaten at the wooden table while the stove ticked and popped. The children were filthy from exploring, full of stories about a beetle the size of a small dog, which I suspect was actually a woodlouse. My wife and I kept catching each other's eye with that particular look that means we are thinking the same thing about how rarely we all sit together like this without somewhere else to be.

I woke once in the night to absolute darkness, the kind that makes you momentarily forget where you are, and heard nothing but trees moving. It was unsettling and then, immediately, completely peaceful. I went back to sleep smiling, which is not something I can say about many hotel stays.

The next morning, I made coffee and stood outside in mist that clung to everything, watching the village emerge below. A man walked past with a dog that looked like it had opinions, and we nodded at each other in that way of people who are both pleased with their mornings. I thought about the bath salts, the goat, the satnav's abandonment. I thought about how I would probably get lost again today, and how little it mattered.

Some holidays you plan to the minute. Others, you simply arrive, slightly battered, and let them happen.