I should have known the sat nav was up to no good the moment it tried to send me through what looked like a farmer's front garden somewhere past Kassel. Three hours of Autobahn bliss had me feeling rather smug about my German driving skills, right up until the final five miles became forty-five minutes of narrow lanes, confused sheep, and me doing a three-point turn in front of a very judgmental horse. Turns out there is a difference between Diemelsee and the actual village of Sudeck, a lesson learned at the cost of my dignity and roughly half a tank of diesel.

By the time I finally crunched up the gravel drive to the cottage, I was in that special state of travel delirium where everything feels faintly absurd. The keys were in the lockbox exactly as promised, though my hands shook slightly from a combination of relief and the three coffees that had seemed such a good idea at the services near Dortmund. The door swung open and I stood there with my suitcase, breathing in that particular smell of wooden beams and slightly damp holiday home that somehow felt like the beginning of something rather than the end of my patience.

The garden was what saved me. Not dramatic, not landscaped within an inch of its life, just a decent patch of grass with a few trees offering shade and a wooden table that looked like it had hosted several decades of leisurely breakfasts. I dumped my bag in the hallway, made the worst cup of tea of my life with some questionable UHT milk I'd found in the fridge, and collapsed onto one of the plastic chairs with the kind of grateful exhaustion that makes you wonder why you ever bother with holidays that require effort.

That first afternoon set the tone for everything that followed. I had brought three books, ambitiously thinking I might need backup, but I barely made it past the first chapter of the top one before finding myself simply staring at the garden. A robin appeared, then vanished. Clouds did interesting things. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked with the lazy irregularity of a creature with nowhere particular to be. I realised I had been holding my shoulders somewhere near my ears for approximately the preceding fortnight, and gradually, with no particular effort, they descended to their proper position.

The cottage itself was comfortable in that unpretentious way that lets you relax properly. The kitchen had everything required for simple meals without aspiring to anything that would make you feel guilty about your own culinary limitations. I cooked pasta with things from the tin one evening, ate it at that wooden table watching the light fade, and felt genuinely pleased with myself in a way that no restaurant reservation has ever managed.

There is a particular pleasure in doing very little somewhere new, I have decided. Not the nothing of scrolling through your phone in familiar surroundings, but the active, engaged nothing of noticing how afternoon shadows move across a lawn you have never seen before. I walked to the nearby bakery exactly once, a pleasant stroll that justified my otherwise complete inactivity, and spent the rest of the week establishing what I can only describe as a rigorous schedule of unstructured time. Coffee in the garden. Book, abandoned. Napping, unapologetic. Repeat.

On my final morning, I sat with my terrible tea and felt something suspiciously like contentment. The sat nav mishap seemed funny now rather than infuriating, which I suppose is the test of a proper holiday. I had seen precisely none of the Sauerland's advertised attractions, hiked no trails, visited no charming villages. Just me, a garden, and the profound, slightly embarrassing realisation that I am absolutely terrible at doing nothing, except when I finally give myself permission to try.