The satnav had been cheerfully insisting we were "arriving at destination" for a good ten minutes before we actually found the place, by which point my husband had already done three laps of what felt like the same identical dyke and I'd developed a nervous habit of checking the rear-view mirror for confused-looking sheep. Turns out we'd driven straight past the turning twice because, in my infinite wisdom, I'd been looking for something that screamed "holiday cottage" rather than a modest, rather lovely bungalow tucked between a nursery and a field of very tall grass. Classic me, always expecting the dramatic reveal when Northern Holland is far too sensible for that sort of nonsense.

We tumbled out of the car with that particular brand of British travel exhaustion, the kind where you've been up since four in the morning, survived Schiphol, collected a hire car with indicators in all the wrong places, and now just want a cup of tea and a sit-down. The key was exactly where promised, which felt like a small miracle given my track record with self-catering arrangements. I once spent forty minutes searching for a keysafe in Cornwall that turned out to be a birdbox. Don't ask.

Stepping inside, the first thing that hit me was the smell, that clean, faintly woody scent of a place that's been properly looked after. No musty corners or suspicious carpets here. The living area was bright and unfussy, with one of those enormous windows that Northern Dutch architecture seems to favour, all the better for watching the light change over the flat fields. I immediately pictured myself there with a book I'd definitely never finish, pretending to be the sort of person who reads on holiday rather than naps with her mouth open.

The kitchen was compact but genuinely practical, not one of those holiday rentals where opening the oven door requires a yoga qualification. I caught myself doing that thing where you open every cupboard to assess the mug situation, a ritual my children find deeply embarrassing. Four decent-sized mugs, a kettle that looked relatively new, and actual tea towels that weren't threadbare. I felt an unreasonable surge of optimism about the week ahead.

My lot had already scattered. The teenager had claimed the room with the better WiFi signal before anyone else had removed their shoes. My youngest was pressing her face against the glass doors to the garden, making excited noises about a trampoline she'd spotted in the listing and had been talking about since March. My husband stood in the middle of the room with his hands on his hips in that particular way men do when they're pretending to assess structural integrity rather than just needing a moment to remember where he was.

I wandered out to the garden myself, barefoot already because I'd decided I was on holiday and therefore above footwear. The trampoline was indeed there, looking slightly more weathered than the photos suggested, which I found oddly reassuring. Everything too pristine makes me suspicious, like I'm being set up to be the first person to break it. Beyond the garden, the view was exactly what I'd come for, that extraordinary Dutch flatness stretching out in every direction, punctuated by the occasional windbreak of trees and the distant suggestion of water that I knew must be the IJsselmeer somewhere.

I'd worried, I realised, standing there with grass between my toes, that this might be too quiet for us. We're not a family that does well with stillness. We bicker in queues, we overfill schedules, we treat relaxation as something that must be achieved efficiently. But something about the particular quality of the light, the way it fell across that wide sky without anything much to interrupt it, made me think perhaps we'd manage. Perhaps I'd manage, if I'm honest, which is the harder part.

By teatime we'd already established our pattern. The children had bounced themselves into a state of pleasant exhaustion. My husband had worked out the recycling system with the enthusiasm of a man who finds foreign domestic arrangements genuinely thrilling. I'd made a terrible attempt at supermarket Dutch that had resulted in what I hoped was milk but might well be something intended for coffee machines. We sat outside with our mugs, watching the evening settle over the fields, and nobody said much of anything, which felt like its own small achievement.

That first night I slept better than I had in months, the deep unconsciousness of someone whose body has finally caught up with the fact that it can stop now. I woke to the sound of birds I couldn't identify and the smell of someone else making tea, which might be the truest definition of holiday I've yet found.