I had been warned about Dutch motorways, but nobody mentioned the sat-nav's creative interpretation of "scenic route." Three hours after leaving the ferry at Hook of Holland, I found myself bumping down a farm track somewhere north of Leeuwarden, convinced I was pioneering a new overland route to Lauwersoog. The track ended in a muddy field full of remarkably unimpressed sheep. My partner, who had been dozing, opened one eye and asked why I was taking agricultural advice from a device that had already tried to send us through a canal in Friesland.

We arrived at the holiday home as the October afternoon was dissolving into something properly grey. The Wadden Sea region does not do dramatic arrivals in autumn. It does dampness, low cloud, and a particular quality of light that makes everything look like a Dutch Golden Age painting left out in the rain. I wrestled our cases from the boot while my other half discovered that the key safe required the dexterity of a concert pianist and the patience of a heron. By the time we got inside, the heating had clicked on and the smell of slightly musty seaside property enveloped us like a wool blanket that had been stored in a shed.

This was very much an off-season stay, and the house knew it. The NOVASOL property in Lauwersoog is built for summer living, really, with its terrace and its big windows facing what I assumed was the harbour, though in the gathering dark it could have been anything. In October the place becomes something else entirely. The sliding doors that would frame barbecues in July became barriers against a wind that had started somewhere in Scandinavia and was not in a hurry to leave. I stood in the kitchen with a cup of tea that was more gesture than comfort, watching condensation form on every surface that faced the sea.

The morning revealed what the night had hidden. Lauwersoog sits where the Lauwersmeer meets the Wadden Sea, and in late autumn the whole area performs a kind of withdrawal. The summer boats are hauled out, the harbour feels provisional, and the tourists have retreated to places with better heating and more reliable sunshine. We walked along the dike on our first full day, properly kitted out in waterproofs that made us rustle like crisp packets, and saw perhaps six other people. One was a dog walker who nodded at us with the particular solidarity of someone else who had misjudged the season.

What struck me, shivering in a bird hide that smelled of damp wood and old sandwiches, was how the autumn timing forced a different kind of attention. In summer I would have been distracted by bustle, by the ferry to Schiermonnikoog, by the terraces full of people eating kibbeling. Instead I found myself watching barnacle geese arrive in their thousands, the sound of them carrying across flat water in a way that felt almost intrusive. The light, when it came, was brief and theatrical, low sun breaking through cloud to turn the reeds gold for perhaps twenty minutes before closing the curtain again.

By the third evening I had stopped fighting it. We bought proper food from the supermarket in Dokkum rather than expecting harbour restaurants to be open. I read an entire book I had been carrying since March. My partner completed a jigsaw puzzle with the grim determination of someone who had made peace with their circumstances. The house, I realised, was not resisting us. It was simply built for a different rhythm, and autumn demanded we find our own.

The mishap with the sat-nav became our running joke, retold with embellishment each evening over wine that warmed us more than the inadequate central heating. I stopped checking the weather forecast. There was a peculiar liberation in surrendering to a season that clearly had no interest in my preferences. Lauwersoog in October does not perform for visitors. It simply continues its ancient business of tides and migrations and the slow turning of the year, and if you happen to be there, shivering and underdressed, you might catch something of its patient, unshowy character.

We left on a morning when the first proper frost had silvered the car roof. The sheep in their field watched us go with the same blank assessment they had offered on arrival. I felt briefly sorry for the summer visitors who would never see this version of the place, never know the particular pleasure of a warm kitchen while the North wind did its worst outside, never understand that sometimes the wrong season is exactly the right one.