The thing about driving to Noordwijk in late October is that you tell yourself it'll be a doddle. Ferry from Harwich, straight run up through Rotterdam, coastal road to the dunes. Simple. Except I'd somehow set my sat nav to avoid motorways, which I only discovered two hours in when I found myself leading a confused convoy of Dutch lorries through what appeared to be somebody's cabbage field near Leiden. The farmer leaning on his gate looked thoroughly unimpressed. I gave him what I hoped was an apologetic wave. He did not wave back.

By the time I actually reached the bungalow park, the autumn light was doing that extraordinary Dutch thing where everything turns honey-gold for about twenty minutes before vanishing completely. The dunes were practically glowing. I'd booked a little place through Novasol, one of those compact bungalows tucked among the pines, and stepping out of the car into that particular smell of cold sand and woodsmoke and damp pine needles, I felt the journey's nonsense simply dissolve. October in Noordwijk is not messing about. It makes you work for your peace.

The bungalow itself was warm enough, though I spent a solid ten minutes fumbling with the heating controls, which were labelled in Dutch with what I can only describe as aggressive optimism. I pressed buttons at random until something clicked and a radiator began its reassuring clank. The previous occupants had left a half-empty jar of speculoos spread in the fridge, which felt both generous and slightly intimate. I ate a spoonful standing at the window, watching the last light leak from the sky over the dunes.

That first evening, I walked down to the beach because the bungalow park literature insisted I was "moments from the shore," and I am constitutionally unable to ignore such claims. The path through the dunes was properly dark by then, and I had not brought a torch because of course I hadn't. I stumbled twice, cursed once quite loudly, and emerged onto sand that felt impossibly vast and empty. The North Sea in autumn is a different creature entirely from its summer self. No gentle lapping, no children with buckets. Just proper Atlantic weight, each wave arriving with what felt like deliberate narrative purpose. I stood there in my inadequate coat, getting salt on my lips, feeling appropriately small.

The seasonal rhythm here is unmistakable. The beach pavilions that would be throbbing with life in July were shuttered and skeletal, a few hardy ones still serving coffee to the determined few. I found one the next morning, its terrace heaters blazing against the grey morning, and sat with a proper koffie verkeerd watching a man walk his dog in wellies through the surf. We nodded at each other with the particular solidarity of people who have chosen to be here now, in this in-between time, rather than waiting for the easier months.

What struck me most, that first day, was how the autumn light keeps shifting its mind. One moment the dunes look almost bleak, all marram grass and shadow, then a crack appears in the cloud and suddenly everything is illuminated, theatrical, briefly magnificent. I kept grabbing my camera, then putting it away, then grabbing it again. A woman cycling past with panniers full of what looked like root vegetables watched me do this three times. She smiled. I chose to believe it was sympathetic.

By evening, properly settled into the bungalow's compact kitchen, I made a stew from ingredients bought at the Albert Heijn in Noordwijk's centre. The town itself was quiet, the summer crowds long departed, the shops selling beach toys looking slightly embarrassed by their own optimism. I found the reduced section and felt genuinely triumphant. Back at the bungalow, eating by lamplight while rain started against the windows, I understood something I hadn't expected. This is the season when Noordwijk returns to itself. The pines creak, the heating clanks, the sea does whatever it needs to do out there in the dark, and you are simply present for it, slightly foolish, cabbage-field navigator, spoonful of speculoos, entirely content.