I should have known the sat-nav was up to no good when it tried to send me through a field of very unimpressed-looking sheep. There I was, winding through the lanes of Hesse with my partner doing that classic passenger thing of wincing every time a hedge got too close, convinced I was about to scrape the hire car down to its bare metal. We were aiming for a converted farmhouse near Kirchheim, and by this point I had already missed one turning, reversed into a suspiciously muddy gateway, and discovered that my GCSE German was absolutely no use whatsoever when confronted with an actual human being at a petrol station.

The final stretch was where it all went properly sideways. The lane narrowed to something roughly the width of a generous bicycle path, and I found myself face to face with a tractor. Not just any tractor, mind you, but one driven by a chap who looked like he had been farming this land since before I was born and had the patience of a saint. He reversed fifty metres with the kind of effortless skill that made my own three-point turn earlier look like a toddler's first attempt at parallel parking. I waved apologetically. He nodded, entirely unbothered. Germans, I have learned, have a remarkable capacity for not making a fuss about things that would send a British person into a twenty-minute anecdote.

We finally spotted the property down a gravel track, and I will admit that my first thought was relief that we had not ended up in someone's actual working farmyard by mistake. The farmhouse sat there looking terribly sensible and Hessian, all timber framing and steep roof, with a garden that had clearly been loved by someone with far greener fingers than mine. My partner had already spotted the terrace and was mentally allocating which chair she would claim for the week. I was still processing the fact that I had managed to bring two left wellies, a discovery made when I went to unpack and found myself holding what was essentially a pair of shoes for someone with two left feet. In my defence, they had been on sale, and I had packed in a hurry.

The owner, a friendly local woman with excellent English and the tolerant air of someone who has seen many hapless British arrivals, showed us round with admirable patience. I nodded along to instructions about the heating, the bins, the recycling system that I knew I would never fully master. She pointed out the wood-burning stove with something approaching pride, and I immediately pictured myself as one of those capable people who could light a fire without filling the room with smoke. Reader, I am not that person, and I knew it even then.

What struck me most, once the car was unpacked and the wellie situation mourned, was the absolute quiet. Not the unsettling quiet of isolation, but the thick, purposeful silence of countryside that knows exactly what it is doing. Birds, wind in trees, the occasional distant agricultural rumble. After the sat-nav chaos and my own incompetence, it felt like being let off the hook. I poured a cup of tea from the travel flask, still warm, and sat on that terrace in my mismatched footwear, already laughing at myself. Some holidays begin with glamour and ease. This one began with me, slightly muddy, slightly defeated, and entirely ready to slow down.