I should have known the holiday was going to be eventful when I put the postcode into the sat nav and it directed me to a field full of very unimpressed cows. Turns out there is a difference between Ostseeresort Olpenitz and a farm near Oldenburg, and I had spent a cheerful forty-five minutes winding through Schleswig-Holstein's lanes congratulating myself on avoiding traffic before realising I was, in fact, completely lost.

The actual resort sits on a narrow spit of land where the Schlei fjord meets the Baltic, and by the time we finally rolled up, the children had reached that peculiar state of feral hunger where they eye the upholstery with intent. My partner had gone very quiet in the passenger seat, which anyone who knows him recognises as the calm before a strongly worded opinion about my navigational skills.

The Inselperle itself is one of those modern timber-framed cottages that look effortlessly Scandinavian until you realise your family will never keep it looking effortlessly anything. We tumbled through the door with suitcases, a cool box leaking something questionable, and a dog who immediately claimed the best spot on the sofa. First impressions? Enormous windows facing the water, light pouring in like the architect was showing off, and a kitchen that actually had more than one saucepan. I stood there for a moment feeling disproportionately pleased about the coffee machine before remembering that the children were still feral and needed feeding.

The mishap with the sat nav had put us behind schedule, so dinner became a frantic raid on the nearest supermarket in Kappeln, twelve minutes up the road. I bought approximately twice as much food as necessary, including three types of German sausage I could not identify and a jar of something pickled that my partner still maintains was a mistake. We ate on the terrace as the light faded over the water, the children suddenly transformed into charming small humans now they had been fed, and I allowed myself to believe the holiday might actually work.

What struck me most that first evening was the particular quality of quiet. Not silence exactly, because the children were still chattering and there was some distant clinking from neighbouring cottages, but the kind of quiet that comes from being surrounded by water on two sides with nothing but flat marshland and sky beyond. The Baltic does not crash here so much as murmur, and the Schlei side is so calm it barely ripples. I found myself watching a heron stand perfectly still on the far bank for so long that my tea went cold.

The cottage had that new-build smell of wood and ambition, and I caught myself worrying about sand on the floors before remembering that sand on floors is precisely what this sort of holiday is for. There is something slightly absurd about paying for a smart holiday home and then immediately trying to live in it as if you are camping, which is more or less what we did. The children were asleep in minutes, exhausted by travel and fresh air, and my partner and I sat up with that second bottle of wine feeling terribly pleased with ourselves despite everything.

By morning I had already accepted that the dog would claim the sofa for the duration, that we would eat too much sausage, and that I would probably get lost again at least once more before the week was out. The Inselperle had already started to feel like the kind of place where such things do not matter particularly.