I have never been so grateful to see a wind turbine in all my life. There we were, my partner and I, crawling along the A6 in our overloaded Fiesta, having just spent forty-five minutes driving in a circle around Lelystad because I had confidently insisted the sat nav was "definitely wrong this time." It was not wrong. I was wrong. This is a recurring theme of my life, and apparently my holidays too.

The mishap that really set the tone, though, happened at the petrol station just outside Dronten. I had hopped out to buy snacks, because obviously a ninety-minute drive requires at least four different types of carbohydrate. I emerged with stroopwafels, something suspiciously orange-flavoured, and absolutely no idea where I had parked the car. I wandered up and down the forecourt like a confused goose, peering into windows, until I spotted my partner frantically waving from what turned out to be the exact same spot where I had left him. He had not moved. I had simply forgotten what our car looked like. "New car?" suggested the attendant, a wiry chap called Henk who had watched this entire performance with the patient amusement of a man who sees too many British tourists. "New brain, more like," I muttered, which made him laugh so hard he gave me an extra stroopwafel for free.

By the time we actually reached Biddinghuizen, I was ready to kiss the ground. Or I would have been, had it not been absolutely tipping down. The rain came horizontally, the kind of rain that makes you question every life choice that brought you to this specific field in Flevoland in September. But then we turned onto the track leading to our holiday home, and there it was: a proper wooden chalet tucked among trees, with a veranda that looked like it had seen a thousand damp barbecues and would see a thousand more.

Our neighbour appeared before we had even opened the boot. Corrie, seventy-ish, wearing wellies that had definitely never seen a shop, and clutching a mug of something steaming. "You the English?" she called out, not as a question but as a statement of fact, as if our nationality preceded us like a weather front. She informed us, without preamble, that the previous occupants had left behind a fishing rod, a half-eaten wheel of Edam, and what she described as "a very complicated relationship." We were instantly charmed.

She introduced us to her husband Kees, who emerged from their chalet with a small dog under each arm and a theory about everything. Within ten minutes he had explained the entire history of Flevoland's land reclamation, the best spot for pike fishing in the nearby Veluwemeer, and why British people always underestimate Dutch rain. "You think this is bad?" he said, gesturing at the downpour with a dog. "Last week we had hail. The Germans in number fourteen tried to barbecue in it. Very determined people, Germans. Very wrong about weather."

The chalet itself was exactly the right kind of basic. The sort of place where you can hear every creak and draught, where the kettle takes approximately one geological age to boil, and where someone has thoughtfully provided a bookcase full of Dutch detective novels and a single, inexplicable copy of a Jeffrey Archer paperback translated into German. We stood on the veranda that evening, wrapped in every blanket we could find, watching the rain finally stop and the sky turn that particular flat Flevoland grey that somehow feels peaceful rather than depressing.

Corrie reappeared with two beers and a plate of bitterballen she had "accidentally made too many of." Kees followed, carrying a fold-up chair in each hand like a man who never travels without seating options. We sat there as the light faded, talking about nothing in particular, while the dog that was not currently under someone's arm sniffed around our ankles and occasionally barked at what Kees assured us was "probably a ghost, but a friendly one, from before the polders."

I thought about my sat nav failures and my petrol station amnesia, and how sometimes the best holidays begin with you feeling slightly ridiculous in a foreign country, dependent on the kindness of strangers who find your incompetence genuinely entertaining rather than annoying. The stroopwafel from Henk. The beers from Corrie. The absolute certainty from Kees that we would catch nothing if we tried to fish, but that he would lend us his rod anyway because "the trying is the point."

The rain started again, soft this time, and nobody moved. "Tomorrow," Corrie said, "we will show you the proper path to the lake. Not the path the Germans use. They go the wrong way. Always the wrong way." She said this with the satisfied authority of someone who had never once, in her entire life, walked in a circle around Lelystad.