I should have known the Sat Nav was up to no good the moment it told me to turn left into what was clearly someone's driveway in the middle of Lower Saxony. There I was, fully committed, waving apologetically at a confused German chap eating his breakfast, while my wife quietly muttered that perhaps we should have bought an actual map. The kids found this absolutely hilarious, of course. Nothing says "family holiday" like trespassing before nine in the morning.

We were aiming for Thale, or more specifically Friedrichsbrunn, a little corner of the Harz that promised fresh air, proper forests, and a complete absence of work emails. The drive from Calais had been long but oddly pleasant, winding through towns with names I couldn't pronounce and past endless fields that looked like they'd been copied and pasted. The Harz mountains proper started to appear as low, forested humps on the horizon, and I felt that familiar flutter of arriving somewhere that actually feels like a break.

Finding the cottage eventually, after what the Sat Nav optimistically called a "scenic route" through what I suspect was a logging track, we pulled up to a tidy wooden place with a balcony that looked out towards nothing but trees. Proper trees, mind you. Not the sad little council plantings you get at home. These were serious German trees, standing to attention like they were waiting for inspection.

The key was in the lockbox, which sounds simple enough, except I'd written the code on my phone, which had died somewhere around Hanover. Cue me performing a small, desperate dance on the doorstep while my wife dug through her bag and miraculously produced the booking email on her ancient phone that she swears she never charges. The door swung open to that particular smell of wooden holiday homes everywhere: slightly musty, slightly piney, and instantly comforting.

Inside was exactly what we'd hoped for. A proper sitting area with squishy seating that looked like it had hosted a thousand post-walk collapses. A kitchen that was compact but not insultingly so, with enough pots and pans to attempt actual cooking rather than just toast. The kids shot upstairs to claim beds, and I heard the thump of luggage and immediate bickering that meant we had, in fact, arrived.

I stepped onto that balcony with a cup of tea that I'd made with slightly too much milk because German fridges are mysterious things, and just stood there. The quiet was almost startling. Not silence exactly, because the forest makes its own noise, but the absence of traffic and sirens and all the background hum of normal life. A woodpecker started up somewhere, sounding like a tiny carpenter with a deadline.

My wife joined me, and we had one of those moments where you don't say much because you're both thinking the same thing. We'd done it. Escaped. The mishaps of the journey, the Sat Nav betrayal, the dead phone, the breakfast trespass, all of it was already becoming funny rather than frustrating. That's the thing about family holidays, isn't it? The chaos becomes the story almost immediately, while the smooth bits fade into nothing.

The kids appeared demanding to know if there was WiFi, which there was, though I found myself hoping it would be patchy enough to discourage too much screen time. We unpacked badly, leaving bags half-open in corners, and I made a mental note to actually use the barbecue that sat on the terrace looking optimistic and slightly rusty.

By evening, we'd walked barely a hundred metres down a forest path, just to stretch legs and let the children burn off some energy. The light through the trees was that particular golden colour that makes even amateur phone photos look almost artistic. We saw nobody. Heard nobody. Just us and the woods and the distant sound of what I chose to believe was a friendly local dog rather than anything more exciting.

Back at the cottage, we attempted a simple pasta dinner with ingredients from a supermarket we'd found in Thale, a town that seemed to exist in a pleasant bubble of normality. The children set the table badly. I opened a beer that tasted better than it probably was. My wife laughed at something, I can't remember what, and it struck me that this was exactly why we'd come. Not for grand adventures or Instagram moments, but for this particular, ordinary, perfect evening in a wooden house surrounded by trees, with people I actually liked spending time with.

The Sat Nav sat in the car, silent and unrepentant. I forgave it everything.