I should have known the Sat Nav was plotting against me the moment it suggested a "scenic route" through what turned out to be a farmer's field. There we were, my family and I, bouncing along a track that grew progressively more adventurous, until a very unimpressed sheep blocked our path and forced an embarrassing three-point turn. My partner gave me that look. You know the one. The "you said this would be relaxing" look. I had, in my defence, been talking up our cottage break in Thale for weeks.

We finally rolled up to the place an hour later than planned, mud-splattered and slightly frayed. But the moment I stepped out of the car, something shifted. The cottage sat there looking terribly pleased with itself, all timber framing and proper German solidity, with the Harz hills rising behind it like they'd been waiting for us to stop making a fuss and just arrive already.

The key was in one of those little lockbox affairs, and I fumbled it twice while my youngest asked whether we were technically breaking in. "It's called self-catering," I told her, with what I hoped sounded like authority. The door swung open and that particular smell hit me - wood polish, something faintly herby, and the ghost of a thousand previous holidays. I love that smell. It smells like not having to make your own bed for a week.

The living area was one of those open-plan numbers that families either adore or destroy each other in. I chose optimism. My son had already claimed the comfiest-looking chair, naturally. The kitchen was properly equipped, not one of those holiday lets where you get a blunt knife and a saucepan with history. I opened a cupboard and found actual spices. Someone, somewhere, had thought about people actually cooking here. I felt a strange responsibility not to let them down.

The garden sloped down toward trees, and I stood there with my tea - proper mug, not a cup and saucer situation, which told me everything about the place's priorities - watching the light change over the wooded hillside. My partner appeared beside me, finally unclenched. "Better than the sheep route," she conceded. High praise.

That evening we walked the ten minutes into Thale proper, which is one of those small German towns that knows exactly what it is. No pretence, no performance. We found a bakery for morning provisions, because I had declared intentions of being "the sort of person who buys fresh bread on holiday." My track record on such declarations is patchy at best, but the intention felt important.

Back at the cottage, the children discovered the WiFi password and promptly disappeared into their devices, while I cooked something simple and slightly burnt at the edges. We ate at the actual dining table, which in our normal lives is mostly a repository for post and abandoned homework. There was a moment, halfway through my daughter telling some convoluted story about a TikTok she'd seen, where I caught my partner's eye across the table. We were doing it. The family holiday thing. Sheep-related delay notwithstanding.

I stepped outside later, proper dark having fallen, and the quiet was almost startling. A dog barked somewhere across the valley. The trees stood there being ancient and indifferent. I thought about how I'd rushed us all here, how I'd let the Sat Nav mishap wind me up, how I'd nearly missed this particular now in worrying about the next thing. The Harz doesn't care about your schedule. It just sits there, being old and green and patient.

I went back inside to find someone had already baggsied the good shower. Some things, I suppose, never change, wherever you are.