I should have known the sat nav was up to no good when it tried to send me through a canal. There I was, bleary-eyed after the ferry from Harwich, following that calm robotic voice through the flat green expanse of Northern Holland, when suddenly it announced with absurd confidence: "Turn left now." The left in question appeared to be a drainage ditch full of very unimpressed ducks. I carried straight on, muttering apologies to the birds, and found myself in a tiny village where an elderly chap on a bicycle took pity on me, pointed west, and said simply "Den Oever" with a knowing chuckle. I suspect I was not the first lost Brit he had rescued.

The approach to the place is what stays with me now. The roads narrow to ribbons between fields so green they almost hum, and then suddenly the air changes. You smell the Wadden Sea before you see it, that particular brackish tang of mud and salt and something else I cannot name. The light does something odd there too, flattening everything and then picking out details with almost theatrical precision. A red roof here, a windmill there, a heron standing in a ditch like a bored sentinel.

I found the property down a lane that felt more like a private driveway, my hire car crunching on gravel that sounded disproportionately loud after the hush of the polder. The key was where they said it would be, in a little lockbox that required the kind of finger gymnastics I am clearly too clumsy for. I dropped it twice. A cat watched from a windowsill opposite, judging silently.

Stepping inside was that peculiar moment of relief and slight disorientation you get with holiday lets. Someone else's life arranged for your convenience. The kitchen smelled faintly of coffee and cleaning products. I opened the back doors before I even unpacked, needing to see what I had actually booked. The garden was longer than I expected, running down to a proper waterway with a small boat tied up, and beyond that the flatness opened into something that felt like the edge of the world. I stood there in my socks, still holding my car keys, and laughed out loud at nothing in particular. It was not elegant laughter. It was the slightly manic sort that comes from too long in a car and too much coffee and the realisation that you have, against reasonable odds, arrived somewhere genuinely rather good.

I made tea badly, using the wrong hob setting and nearly boiling the kettle dry because I was too busy staring out the window. The light was starting to go that particular Dutch grey-gold, and I could hear water birds I could not identify making noises I had never heard before. Somewhere a dog barked, and another answered, and then silence again.

I had planned to unpack properly, to establish order, to be the sort of person who settles efficiently into new spaces. Instead I sat on the wooden bench outside with my questionable tea and watched the sky do things I did not know skies could do in a place so close to sea level. The mishap with the sat nav felt like hours ago and also like the necessary price of admission. You cannot find the edge of things by following the obvious route. Someone should tell the ducks I am sorry.