The trouble started before we even reached Friesland, when I confidently told my partner I had "absolutely mastered" driving a left-hand drive hire car and promptly scraped the wing mirror on a bollard at Schiphol's exit barrier. Nothing says "relaxing Dutch holiday" like reversing sheepishly while a queue of impeccably calm Dutch drivers wait without honking, which somehow makes it worse.

By the time we reached Workum, I was gripping the steering wheel like I was landing a plane. The satnav had given up trying to pronounce Frisian road names and was making sounds like a cat coughing up a hairball. But then we turned onto a narrow lane between two canals, and there it was: our little holiday house, all red brick and white window frames, with a garden that sloped down toward the water. I forgot about the mirror immediately. Well, almost.

We'd barely stepped out of the car when a man appeared from next door, leaning on a rake that he definitely wasn't using. "English?" he said, not as a question but as a cheerful accusation. This was Sietse, seventy-odd, wearing clogs that looked older than me and a cap that had seen actual farming. Within four minutes I knew his entire life story, his opinions on modern bicycles ("rubbish"), and that his wife was inside making stamppot and I was invited, no arguments. I tried to explain we had Tesco sandwiches in the boot. He looked at me like I'd confessed to a crime.

The house itself was exactly the sort of straightforward Dutch practicality I needed after my driving trauma. Clean lines, good heating, a kitchen where everything had its place. But I barely noticed because Sietse had followed us inside, still talking, pointing out which light switch did what and where he'd once helped the previous owners fix a leak. "Good people," he kept saying. "You're good people too, I think. We'll see."

That evening, determined to buy him beer as thanks for the stamppot invitation, I cycled to the village shop. I say cycled - I wobbled on a bike with no crossbar that Sietse had produced from his shed, saying it had been his daughter's in 1987. At the shop, a woman called Joke - pronounced exactly how English people want to laugh but mustn't - took charge of my beer selection with the authority of a sommelier. "Sietse drinks this," she announced, handing me something local. "Don't buy him Heineken, he pretends to like it but he doesn't. He's too polite." I loved her instantly. She told me she'd lived in Workum her whole life, that the tourists were getting "too touristy," and that I had cycling posture like "a frightened heron." She wasn't wrong.

Back at the house, Sietse was waiting in our garden. Not in a creepy way, in a Dutch way. He'd brought his wife, Antje, who was small and fierce and immediately reorganised our kitchen cupboards while telling me about her sister in Leeuwarden who'd married the wrong man in 1969 and was still complaining. The stamppot was excellent. The beer was better. I understood perhaps forty percent of Sietse's Frisian-accented Dutch, but Antje translated by shouting the English words very slowly as if volume bridged all gaps.

By day three, I was a local celebrity of sorts. The baker knew I wanted "that one, the almond one" before I spoke. A man in the harbour shouted "Mirror!" every time I passed, which I eventually realised was his actual name, not a reference to my driving. Sietse had taken to leaving notes in our letterbox: weather forecasts, invitations to coffee, once a single tomato from his greenhouse with "TOO MANY" written on the envelope.

I came to Friesland expecting windmills and water, which I got. But what I'll remember is Sietse's endless opinions, Joke's brutal honesty, Antje's cupboard-straightening efficiency, and Mirror's inexplicable nickname. There's something about small places that doesn't let you stay a stranger, even when you're a frightened heron on a child's bicycle who can't drive properly. I scraped that mirror on the way back to Schiphol too, by the way. Some things don't change.