I have never been one for complicated holidays. Give me a cottage, a stack of books, and permission to do absolutely nothing for a week, and I am happier than a pig in proverbial. So when I booked a place called Lautenthal in the Harz region of Germany, I had grand visions of precisely this: horizontal living, interrupted only by the making of tea and the occasional wander to see if the garden had changed in the last hour.

The journey from the UK was where my first mistake revealed itself. I had packed with what I can only describe as deranged optimism. One small suitcase, I told myself, would suffice. No need for the big case. I am a minimalist now, I declared to my reflection in the mirror at five in the morning. I have evolved. This delusion lasted until I was standing at St Pancras trying to wrestle three jumpers, a raincoat, two novels, a travel pillow, and an emergency packet of custard creams into a bag clearly designed for a weekend in Brighton. The zipper made a noise like a dying cat. A man in a very sensible rucksack looked at me with what I can only describe as compassionate concern.

By the time I reached Lautenthal, somewhere between Hanover and my own exhaustion, I had developed a profound respect for people who travel light. I also had a crick in my neck from the bag strap and a new understanding of why tortoises do not carry their homes on their fronts.

But then I arrived. And honestly, the whole undignified packing saga melted away the moment I saw the place. Lautenthal sits in a valley in the Harz, surrounded by woods that look like they have been waiting patiently for someone to finally sit down and appreciate them. The cottage itself was exactly the sort of unpretentious, solid little building that makes you want to exhale for what feels like the first time in months. No fuss. No grandeur. Just a proper roof, a proper garden, and the immediate sense that nobody was going to ask anything of you.

I dumped my ludicrously overpacked bag in the hallway with the theatrical exhaustion of someone who has just completed an Arctic expedition rather than a perfectly normal train journey. Then I did what any sensible person would do. I made a cup of tea, found the most rickety-looking chair in the garden, and sat in it.

The garden was the real revelation. Not manicured, not designed, just... existing. A patch of grass, some trees that had clearly been there longer than any holidaymaker, and a view of the hills that made my usual London horizon of neighbouring windows feel like a fever dream I was finally waking from. I watched a bee attempt to navigate a flower for what must have been twenty minutes. I am not ashamed to say I was rooting for it.

The days that followed established a rhythm so lazy it barely qualified as rhythm. Morning tea in the garden, watching the mist lift off the valley. A bit of reading until the words started swimming, which happened sooner than I care to admit. Lunch, which was mostly bread and cheese because this is Germany and why would you complicate bread and cheese. Then more sitting. Perhaps a wander to the edge of the village, where the houses thin out and the woods take over. The Harz has proper forests, the kind where you half expect to encounter a witch from the old fairy tales, though in my experience the only wildlife I disturbed was my own thoughts, which had been chattering away for months and finally, here, seemed to run out of things to say.

I did attempt one walk. The Brocken, that famous peak, was visible on clear days, but I looked at it the way one looks at a gym membership: with vague intention and absolutely no follow-through. Instead I found a flatter path along a stream, walked for perhaps half an hour, congratulated myself excessively, and returned to my chair.

There is something deeply unfashionable about admitting you spent a holiday doing almost nothing. We are supposed to come back with stories, with achievements, with photographs of vistas conquered. I have none of that. I have a photograph of my feet in the garden. I have half-read novels with grass stains on their covers. I have the memory of an afternoon so still that I could hear a woodpecker working on a tree somewhere across the valley, and instead of going to look, I simply listened.

On my last morning I packed my ridiculous suitcase with the same inefficient enthusiasm, though I left behind a pair of socks that had developed a hole and seemed to belong to the cottage now. The train back felt longer, or perhaps I was simply less willing to arrive anywhere else. I thought about that bee, still presumably navigating flowers. I thought about the garden, which would continue its slow, patient existence without any witness at all.

That is the thing about doing very little in a place like Lautenthal. You realise the world does not need your participation to be marvellous. It just is. And for one week, so was I.