The satnav had been insisting for a good twenty minutes that I take the next left into what appeared to be a potato field, so by the time I actually rolled up to the holiday park in Beekbergen, I was in that peculiar state of British frazzle where you have simultaneously too much adrenaline and not enough patience. The final mishap came as I swung into the parking space, misjudged the width of our hire car by a solid foot, and deposited the entire contents of my travel mug onto my own lap. Cold coffee. Cream trousers. The full indignity. I sat there for a moment, steaming gently in the April drizzle, wondering if the Dutch have a specific word for this feeling. They probably do. They have words for everything.

April in Gelderland is not, I should say, the Netherlands at its most obviously seductive. The tulip fields of Keukenhof are a trek away and not my concern here. What you get instead is something more tentative, more quietly theatrical. The beech trees that give Beekbergen its name were only just considering whether to commit to full leaf, holding back like punters at an auction, and the heathland beyond the park was a patchwork of last year's russet brown and the first stubborn green shoots. The air smelled of damp earth and something else, something I eventually identified as woodsmoke from a neighbouring cabin where someone had clearly decided that April drizzle was no reason to abandon outdoor living.

Our bungalow sat among similar low wooden buildings, the sort of practical Dutch architecture that makes no pretence at charm yet somehow accumulates it through sheer functionality. The key was in a lockbox, which I fumbled with still-damp fingers, and the door opened onto that particular holiday-rental smell of recent cleaning and central heating left on too high. But what struck me immediately were the windows, enormous things running the length of the living area, and beyond them the garden dropping away into birch scrub and then the heath proper. The light was doing that typical Low Countries thing, flat and silvery, making everything appear slightly more significant than it perhaps was. I stood there in my coffee-stained trousers and felt something unknot in my chest.

The seasonal uncertainty defined everything that first afternoon. I had packed for spring, obviously, but Dutch spring is not British spring, which at least has the decency to be consistently disappointing. Here the temperature swung between requiring a coat and wondering why you had brought one. I walked down to the village, passing cyclists in full winter gear and others in short sleeves, both looking equally comfortable with their choices. The local supermarket had Easter displays still up, chocolate eggs looking slightly forlorn now the holiday had passed, and outside someone had planted pansies in a wheelbarrow, a gesture of optimism that felt almost aggressively Dutch.

By evening I had built a fire in the little wood burner, another April necessity, and sat with wine watching the last light fail over the heath. The trees had disappeared into silhouette, black against a sky that refused to go fully dark, that northern latitude holding onto the day like a child with a toy. Somewhere a woodpecker was making its presence known, presumably also confused by the season. I thought about my coffee-stained trousers, now soaking in the sink, and about how I had arrived frazzled and slightly ridiculous and how quickly the place had made that feel permissible, even appropriate. April here was not trying to impress anyone. It was simply itself, changeable and slightly stubborn and quietly beautiful in its refusal to perform. I found I rather liked it for that. The fire crackled. The sky finally gave up and went dark. I poured more wine and stopped waiting for the weather to make up its mind.