I should have known the holiday was going to be eventful when I put the postcode into my sat nav and it confidently directed me to a field of very unimpressed Friesian cows. Three-point turn in front of a bovine audience, dignity in tatters, and we were off to a flying start.

The journey up through the Netherlands had been surprisingly painless, all flat green fields and those tidy Dutch farmhouses that make you feel slightly ashamed of your own garden. My partner dozed in the passenger seat while the kids argued about whose turn it was to choose the music, a debate that has been ongoing since approximately 2015. I crossed the Afsluitdijk with the IJsselmeer glittering on one side and the Wadden Sea stretching grey-green on the other, and felt that lovely shift that happens when you properly leave ordinary life behind.

Tzummarum itself announced itself with a modest sign and a cluster of red-roofed houses. No fanfare, no tourist tat, just a quiet Frisian village getting on with things. I rather liked it immediately. We found our holiday home down a narrow lane, tucked behind a hedge that had clearly been given its freedom and was making the most of it.

The key was where they said it would be, which felt like a small victory after my navigational humiliation. I fumbled with the lock, dropped it twice, and finally shouldered the door open with the grace of a burglar having an off day. Then we all just stood there in the hallway, breathing in that particular smell of holiday cottages everywhere: slightly woody, faintly of cleaning products, and somehow promising.

The living room was properly cosy, not the cramped "cosy" estate agents try to sell you. Beamed ceiling, decent-sized sofa that looked like it had absorbed several decades of family holidays, and windows that let in proper north light, that clear pale brightness you get up here. The kitchen was compact but sensibly arranged, and I immediately opened every cupboard to perform my traditional inventory, a ritual my family finds inexplicable but tolerates.

The kids had bolted upstairs before I'd finished, and their whoops confirmed that the bedrooms passed inspection. I trailed up after them, slightly worried about what constituted excitement in their world, and found two perfectly decent rooms with sloped ceilings and views over neighbouring gardens. My daughter had already claimed the bed by the window. My son was testing the bounciness of his mattress with scientific thoroughness.

Back downstairs, I made the obligatory first cup of tea using the provided kettle, which worked with the enthusiastic efficiency of something that knows its purpose in life. I carried it out to the small terrace, nearly tripped over the step I'd just been warned about by my partner, and settled onto a slightly weathered wooden chair. The garden was modest, a patch of grass with a hedge on three sides and a glimpse of the village beyond. A bicycle went past, the rider nodding without breaking stride, that easy Frisian acknowledgement that says "you're here now" without making a fuss of it.

I sat there with my tea going lukewarm, listening to the unfamiliar quiet. No traffic to speak of, just birds and distant voices and the wind moving through trees I couldn't see. The mishap with the cows already felt like it belonged to someone else, or at least to an earlier, more stressed version of myself. That's the thing about arriving somewhere properly, I think. However you get there, however many wrong turns and bovine witnesses, there's a moment when you exhale and let the place do its work.

The kids were arguing again upstairs, something about who got which drawer. I should probably intervene before it escalated. But not quite yet. Another sip of tea, another minute of this particular peace. The holiday had begun, in its own unhurried, slightly chaotic, entirely welcome way.