We set off for Ostseeresort Olpenitz in mid-November with that particular brand of optimism that only a British family armed with thermos flasks and half a boot full of waterproofs can muster. Schleswig-Holstein in late autumn, we told ourselves, would be bracing. Invigorating. Romantic, even. What we got, within twenty minutes of crossing the Danish border, was horizontal rain and the slow realisation that I had packed three left wellies and no right ones. My wife found this hilarious for approximately four miles. Then her own boots started leaking.

The drive through the flat Schleswig-Holstein countryside had a certain melancholy charm at this time of year. The fields stretched out brown and stubbled, the occasional red farmhouse huddled against the wind, and the light had that thin, watery quality that makes everything look slightly faded, like an old postcard. We passed Kappeln as the afternoon was already thinking about becoming evening, the harbour there quiet now that the summer boats had been lifted out. You could tell the tourist season had long since packed its bags. The ice cream signs were turned to the wall. A single seagull sat on a mooring post looking personally offended by the temperature.

Finding the resort itself took a small detour through what I can only describe as increasingly assertive puddles. Ostseeresort Olpenitz sits on a narrow spit of land where the Schlei fjord meets the Baltic, and in November this feels less like a location and more like a geographical opinion. The holiday homes are arranged in neat terraces, all very Scandinavian-influenced with their pale wood and big windows, and in summer I imagine the place hums with barbecues and children shrieking in the shared pool. Now, arriving at four o'clock with darkness already pooling in the east, it felt like letting ourselves into a very well-appointed ghost town.

Our particular house had underfloor heating, which I activated with the enthusiasm of a man who has just remembered what warmth feels like. The big sliding door looked out towards the water, though "looked out" is generous at that hour; what we mostly saw was our own reflections, getting gradually less blue as the heating did its work. My wife made tea. I dealt with the wellie situation by wearing two pairs of thick socks and pretending this had been the plan. The children, mercifully, had discovered the television.

What struck me that first evening, and what I kept returning to over the following days, was how completely the season had colonised the experience. This was not the Ostseeresort Olpenitz of the brochures, with their sailing boats and golden families. This was something stranger and, in its way, more interesting. The shared facilities were technically open but practically deserted; we had the indoor pool to ourselves one morning, swimming in the strange half-silence of a space designed for noise. The little supermarket on site had reduced hours and a melancholy selection of root vegetables. The beach, when we walked down to it, was entirely ours, the sand cold and firm, the Baltic a uniform grey that merged with the sky at some indeterminate horizon. My daughter collected shells that I suspected were actually fragments of old mussel farming equipment. I did not mention this.

There is something about the off-season that strips a place back to its bones. Without the distraction of sunshine and busyness, you notice the cleverness of the architecture, the way the houses are angled to catch what light there is. You notice the absolute flatness of the land, the huge sky, the particular quality of silence when the wind drops. You also notice, with the part of your brain that refuses to be romantic, that you are paying full price for a holiday home and receiving about forty percent of the advertised experience. This is the gentle self-reflection part. I stood in that heated indoor pool, entirely alone, and thought: we are the only fools here. Then I did three lengths of breaststroke and felt, briefly, like a Viking.

The mornings in late autumn came slowly. We would wake to grey light and the sound of wind in the bare trees, build up the heating, drink too much coffee. The nearby village of Olpenitz itself, what there is of it, consisted of a handful of houses and a closed restaurant. We drove to Kappeln for supplies, for fish from the smokehouse there, for the simple pleasure of seeing other humans. The Schlei was the colour of pewter, the fishing boats tied up and still. Everything felt held in suspension, waiting for something that would not arrive for months.

By our final day I had grown fond of this suspended quality. We took one last walk on that empty beach, the children properly bundled now, my wellie situation resolved by a trip to a supermarket in Eckernforde that also sold horse feed and mysterious German plumbing supplies. The Baltic offered nothing in the way of sunset, just a gradual darkening from one grey to a slightly darker one. But there was a moment, standing there with the wind making honest work of my coat, when I felt something like peace. The season had given us absence, inconvenience, a certain dampness of spirit. It had also given us space to simply be in a place, without the performance of holiday-making. I would not necessarily recommend November. But I find I do not regret it either.

We loaded the car in proper darkness, the resort's few lights making yellow pools against the black. My wife checked for her keys three times, a habit born of the general off-kilter feeling of the week. The children were asleep before we reached the main road. I drove us south through that flat, dark country, the heater blasting against the chill, already half-convincing myself that next year we would come in summer, like sensible people, and swim in the actual sea, and eat ice cream, and complain about the crowds. But some part of me, the part that had stood alone in that heated pool and felt like the last person in Schleswig-Holstein, knew that we probably would not.