I have never been so happy to see a place with a roof on it as I was when we finally rolled up to our holiday cottage in Elburg. The drive from the ferry had taken the best part of five hours, which in itself was not the problem. The problem was my unshakable confidence that I could navigate the last twenty minutes without the sat nav. "I have looked at the map," I told my partner, with the misplaced certainty of a man who once found his way out of IKEA in under an hour. "It is basically a straight line."

It was not basically a straight line. It was, I now know, a series of identical-looking lanes lined with identical-looking trees, punctuated by identical-looking farmhouses, each of which I became increasingly convinced we had already passed. We circled the same stretch of polderland three times. My partner maintained a diplomatic silence that spoke louder than any shouting match. When we finally spotted the sign for Elburg, I actually cheered, which she found more embarrassing than the getting lost.

The cottage itself sat on the edge of town, a solid brick place with a proper thatched roof that made me feel immediately like I had wandered into a Dutch painting. I had worried it might feel a bit sterile, one of those holiday lets where you are afraid to touch anything in case it is part of the "styling." But the door opened with a satisfying clunk, and inside it smelled of wood polish and something faintly of apples, and there was a pair of actual clogs by the door that looked like they had actually been worn rather than ordered from a catalogue called "Authentic Dutch Charm."

I made straight for the kitchen, because I am predictable, and found a proper coffee maker and a note from the owner saying the eggs in the fridge were from her own hens. This small detail undid me completely. I stood there holding the note, unexpectedly moved by the generosity of strangers, while my partner brought in the bags and made the entirely fair observation that I was doing the standing-about bit while she did the lifting. I rallied and carried the smallest bag with theatrical effort.

The garden was the real surprise. A proper Dutch garden, not too big, everything in its place, with a little terrace where you could sit and look out over the fields. There was even a barbecue that looked like it had seen some action. I pictured evenings out there with a beer and whatever we could cobble together from the local shops, and for the first time since the sat nav debacle, I felt the proper holiday feeling settle over me.

Elburg itself was a short walk away, though we did not make it that first evening. We were too busy working out which light switches did what and arguing about whether the heating was on. I lost that argument and spent ten minutes in my coat before admitting I had been wrong, which my partner accepted with the grace of someone who has been waiting fifteen years for me to admit I am wrong about anything.

By the time we sat down with our supermarket bread and cheese, the mishaps of the journey had already become funny rather than frustrating. That is the thing about arriving somewhere that feels right. The getting lost becomes part of the story rather than the whole of it. I fell asleep that night to the sound of nothing much at all, which after years of London traffic felt like the most luxurious thing imaginable.