I should have known the Sat Nav was up to no good the moment it tried to send me through what looked like someone's back garden. Four hours from the Eurotunnel, two coffee stops, and one very questionable service station sandwich later, my partner and I finally crossed into Friesland, and promptly got ourselves magnificently lost.

The mishap was this: I had confidently announced, somewhere near Heerenveen, that I "knew exactly where we were." Reader, I did not. I had mistaken a canal for a different canal, which in a province criss-crossed by more waterways than roads is rather like confusing one grain of sand for another on a beach. We spent twenty minutes circling a village so small it barely qualified as a dot, while a local on a bicycle watched us pass his house three times with the amused patience of a man who has seen this all before.

By the time we actually found Grou, I was in that peculiar state of frazzled determination where you will absolutely not ask for directions but will happily argue with a GPS voice for ten minutes. And then we turned onto the quiet lane, and there it was: our holiday home, sitting pretty beside the water with that particular stillness that only proper countryside manages.

The first thing that struck me was the smell. Not the petrol-station-and-regret aroma of our car, but something green and properly alive. Water and reeds and that faint, honest scent of cows somewhere in the middle distance. I stood on the little path for a moment, suddenly aware that my shoulders had been somewhere up near my ears for most of the journey.

The house itself had that solid, unhurried look of somewhere built to last through proper winters. Nothing fancy, nothing trying too hard. Just clean lines, a decent bit of garden, and windows that actually looked out at something worth seeing. I fumbled with the key box, dropped the code sheet, picked it up with muddy fingers from where I'd trodden on it, and finally got the door open with all the grace of a burglar having an off day.

Inside, it was exactly the sort of straightforward comfort you want after a long drive. Good light, decent space, a kitchen that suggested actual cooking might happen rather than the usual holiday pretence. I immediately went to the back, of course, because the water was right there, and found myself on a little terrace with a view of boats drifting past at a pace that made our journey here feel faintly ridiculous.

My partner appeared with two cups of tea, because some British instincts survive any crossing. We stood there in silence for a bit, watching a man in a small boat potter past with a dog that looked considerably more experienced at boating than either of us. I thought about how I'd been so certain about that canal, so wrong about everything, and how it absolutely had not mattered in the end.

That evening, we walked the short distance into the village itself, just to stretch our legs and find somewhere to eat. Grou turned out to be the sort of place where people say hello without making a performance of it, where the pub has been there long enough to feel inevitable, and where you can sit by water that actually moves with purpose, heading somewhere with boats on it. We ate something fried and entirely appropriate, drank beer that tasted of having arrived, and walked back in the long northern light with the particular satisfaction of people who have finally stopped moving.

I fell asleep that night to the sound of water against boats and the distant hum of a canal lock doing whatever canal locks do. The Sat Nav sat silent and judgmental on the kitchen counter. I did not apologise to it. Some things, a person simply does not forget.