I have never been so grateful for a sat nav's patience as I was driving up to our holiday cottage in Vlagtwedde. Three hours from the Eurotunnel, gliding through the flat Dutch countryside, I was feeling rather smug about my international driving skills. That smugness lasted right up until I confidently turned into what I believed was our lane, only to find myself face to face with a very large, very unimpressed horse. Not a field of horses. One horse, standing in the middle of a private drive, looking at me with the kind of disappointment I normally reserve for my own reflection after a second breakfast. I had taken the wrong turning. The sat nav, in its infinite wisdom, had tried to warn me. I had not listened. I reversed past three increasingly amused cyclists, found the actual entrance, and arrived at our cottage with what dignity I had left.

The cottage itself was a proper charmer. Low ceilings, beams you could easily concuss yourself on, and a kitchen that smelled faintly of coffee and something baked. But it was the people who made that first afternoon unforgettable.

Within ten minutes of unloading the car, our neighbour Bert appeared. He was seventy if he was a day, wearing gardening trousers held up by what I can only describe as optimism and a very old belt. He leant on our fence and announced, "You are the English. I can tell by the driving." I decided not to explain about the horse. Bert, it transpired, knew everything about everyone in a three-mile radius and was delighted to have fresh audience. He told us about the previous occupants, a German couple who had tried to make sauerkraut in the shed and created what Bert called "a situation with the flies." He said this with the gravity of a man discussing international diplomacy.

His wife Ria appeared shortly after with a plate of stroopwafels and a small dog named Frits who immediately claimed our doorstep as his territory. Ria spoke English in bursts, like a radio tuning itself, and had strong opinions about British weather that she needed us to validate. "It rains always, yes?" she demanded. I thought about last summer's hosepipe ban and agreed that yes, essentially, it rained always. She seemed satisfied.

The postman, a lanky chap called Henk who delivered on a bicycle that squeaked with operatic persistence, stopped to introduce himself too. He had been watching our arrival, he admitted, because "not much happens." He delivered the same route for twenty-two years and could tell us who lived where, who had moved, who had returned, and who had "gone to Groningen city and become strange." He said this last part with genuine sorrow, as if Groningen city were some kind of cult.

By teatime we had also met Joke from the village shop, who was not joking about anything, particularly not about her cheese selection, and a chap called Sietse who cycled past three times before stopping to ask if we were "the ones lost with the horse." News travels fast when not much happens.

I sat on our little terrace that evening, stroopwafel in hand, watching Bert water his dahlias with military precision, Ria shouting corrections from their kitchen window, Frits barking at a leaf. I had come for the peace of the Groningen countryside, for the wide skies and the cycling paths. What I had not expected was this immediate, slightly overwhelming, utterly genuine welcome from people who simply wanted to know us, to place us in their landscape, to make sure we understood that the horse, ultimately, had been our fault.

There is something humbling about being the entertainment. Something grounding too. I think I needed reminding that the best journeys do not go to plan, that getting lost introduces you to horses and to yourself, and that there are still places where a stranger is just a neighbour you have not met yet, preferably with biscuits.

I went to bed that night with a bruised ego, a full stomach, and the distant sound of Henk's squeaking bicycle making its evening rounds. I slept better than I had in months.