I'd driven from Harwich to Hook of Holland and then trundled east for what felt like several geological epochs, so by the time I reached Delden I was in that peculiar state where you forget which side of the road you're meant to be on. The satnav had been cheerfully optimistic about my arrival time, neglecting to account for my inexplicable detour through a village whose name I still cannot pronounce, where I became convinced I was being followed by the same blue bicycle for twenty minutes. It turned out to be three different people on three identical bicycles. I am not a natural international detective.

The mishap, though. Oh, the mishap. I had stopped at a petrol station near Hengelo to buy what I believed was a bottle of still water. I had in fact purchased something called "karnemelk," which I now understand to be buttermilk. I discovered this by taking an enormous gulp while waiting at traffic lights in Delden, resulting in a spray of white liquid across my windscreen and a noise that can only be described as "surprised goose." A man in the next car watched this happen. We made eye contact. He did not look away. I have never felt more British in my life.

The property itself sat at the end of a narrow lane, all red brick and proper Dutch tidiness, the sort of place that makes you immediately conscious of your car's mud splatters. I was still wiping buttermilk from my chin when I encountered my first local character: a woman called Mieke who was walking what appeared to be an extraordinarily judgmental dachshund. She asked, in flawless English that shamed my entire education, whether I was "the Englishman who had trouble with the dairy products." News travels fast in small Dutch towns, apparently via some network I cannot detect.

Mieke, it transpired, knew everything. She knew the house's history, the previous occupants, the exact week in 1987 when the bathroom had been retiled. She delivered this information with the casual authority of someone who had never once purchased accidentally fermented milk. Her dachshund, Willem, regarded me with what I can only describe as sustained professional disappointment.

Inside, the place had that particular stillness of a house waiting to see what sort of guest you've turned out to be. I put the kettle on, because I am British and this is my solution to most emotional states including mild humiliation. Within minutes there was a knock at the door. A man called Henk introduced himself as the neighbour who "keeps an eye," though his actual responsibilities seemed to involve extensive commentary on my parking angle and the weather prospects for the fortnight. He had opinions about cloud formations that I suspect were inherited from his grandfather. Possibly his grandfather's grandfather. The clouds, he assured me, were "untrustworthy this time of year, but in a predictable way."

I spent that first evening mostly failing to operate the induction hob and being visited by a succession of people who seemed to have been waiting for fresh entertainment. A teenager called Lieke appeared to borrow something from the shed, stayed for twenty minutes to explain her theories about British television, and left without the thing she had come for. An older gentleman called Theo cycled past three times, each time stopping to add another detail about the local walking routes, until I had approximately seven hours of potential hiking and no clear sense of which direction any of them went.

By bedtime I had consumed three cups of tea, no proper dinner, and a thorough education in Delden's social architecture. I lay there listening to unfamiliar house noises and the distant sound of Henk apparently having an extended conversation with his greenhouse. I had arrived as a buttermilk-soaked stranger. I was, I suspected, already being absorbed into something. Whether I wanted to be or not.