We set off for Ostseeresort Olpenitz with the kind of optimism that only a family who has never attempted a six-hour drive with two children and a boot full of camping chairs can muster. My partner had insisted we leave at dawn. We left at half nine, which in holiday maths is basically the same thing. The M20 was kind enough, the Eurotunnel less so, and by the time we hit the autobahns of northern Germany I had already eaten my entire snack supply and most of the children's.

The mishap, because there is always one, arrived precisely forty minutes from destination. My partner, who had been navigating with the quiet confidence of someone who had not once glanced at the route, announced we needed petrol. I pointed out we had passed three stations. He pointed out he had assumed there would be more. There were not. The fuel light had been glaring at us for what I later calculated was seventeen miles of stubborn denial. We limped into a village somewhere near Kappeln that I cannot name because I was too busy white-knuckling the dashboard, found a pump, and paid roughly the GDP of a small nation for enough diesel to see us through. I did not say "I told you so." I thought it very loudly, which in marriage counts as restraint.

The approach to Ostseeresort Olpenitz is rather something. You pass through flat green fields, the odd red-roofed farmhouse, and then suddenly there are these timber-framed cottages clustered right on the Schlei inlet like someone dropped a Nordic fishing village and thought better of moving it. Our place was one of the newer builds, all pale wood and enormous windows, the sort that make you immediately conscious of how much stuff you have brought for a week. The children bolted for the upstairs bedroom before I had even located the key safe, which took longer than I care to admit because I had written the code on my phone and my phone was in the car, and the car was where my partner was still having a dignified sulk about the petrol situation.

The first impression of the cottage interior was light. So much light. And wood. Everywhere wood. I found myself wondering if Scandinavians ever get tired of wood, then remembered I was in Schleswig-Holstein and not Sweden and felt briefly foolish. The kitchen opened onto a deck with views across the water that made me forgive the drive, the fuel fiasco, and the fact that my daughter had already managed to jam her finger in the sliding door. The bathroom had underfloor heating, which I discovered by lying flat on the tiles to test it, a decision my family found more amusing than dignified.

We unpacked with the chaotic energy of people who have not yet learned where anything belongs. The children claimed the bunks. My partner discovered the dishwasher and made a small noise of relief that I have not heard since our wedding day. I stood on the deck with a cup of tea made from questionable German teabags and watched a heron flap past with the lazy entitlement of a creature that has never run out of petrol in its life.

That evening we walked the coastal path as the light went soft and golden, the Schlei water turning that particular silver-grey you only seem to get in northern Germany. The children threw stones. My partner and I held hands without discussing the fuel incident. A family of swans passed by looking judgmental. We bought bread and cold meats from a tiny shop in Olpenitz itself, ate on the deck as the temperature dropped, and retreated inside to discover the underfloor heating had made the bathroom tiles genuinely toasty.

I went to bed that night in a proper duvet, in a proper quiet, with the water lapping somewhere nearby and my daughter's foot pressed against my ribs because she had migrated in her sleep. It was not perfect. The teabags were still questionable. But as I lay there listening to unfamiliar silence, I felt that particular loosening that only comes when you stop trying to make a holiday brilliant and simply let it be what it is. The petrol fiasco had become funny already, or nearly funny, and the heron had not judged me for lying on the bathroom floor. Tomorrow we would attempt the beach, and the children would lose at least one shoe, and I would probably overpack the picnic. For now, though, there was wood and warmth and water, and the gentle realisation that I had not thought about work once since lying on those heated tiles.