I have never been more grateful for a sat nav in my entire life, and I have never wanted to throw one out of a moving vehicle quite so badly either. The journey to Noordwijk from the ferry at Hoek van Holland had been going swimmingly until I decided I knew better than the robotic voice telling me to take the next exit. "Shortcut," I muttered to myself, turning down what looked like a perfectly sensible farm track. Twenty minutes later I was staring at a field of very unimpressed sheep, wondering how I had managed to get lost in one of the flattest countries on earth. The sheep, I should note, offered no useful directions whatsoever.

When I finally rolled up to the holiday park, slightly frazzled and smelling faintly of the cheese sandwich that had not survived the detour, I was met by a chap called Henk who was mowing the grass with the kind of precision I normally associate with neurosurgeons. He killed the engine, looked at my mud-splattered car, and said, "Ah, you found the scenic route then." I liked him immediately. He handed over the keys with a warning that the hot water tap in the kitchen had a personality and needed coaxing. "Talk to it nicely," he said, completely straight-faced. "It is Dutch, after all."

The bungalow itself was one of those satisfyingly solid brick affairs, all clean lines and enormous windows that made you feel like you were living inside a very well-appointed greenhouse. I dumped my bags and immediately went to test the personality of the hot water tap, which did indeed require some gentle persuasion and perhaps one mildly apologetic word. While I was standing there negotiating with plumbing, my neighbour appeared at the kitchen window. Her name was Grietje, she was seventy if she was a day, and she was wearing wellington boots with her housecoat. "You are English," she announced, which I suppose was obvious from my ongoing conversation with the tap. "I will bring you proper coffee tomorrow. The machine in there is German. Very efficient. Very boring."

That evening I wandered down to the dunes, partly to stretch my legs and partly because Henk had mentioned the beach was "just there" with a wave of his hand that suggested Dutch people have a very different understanding of distance than I do. It was, in fact, a pleasant stroll through pine trees that smelled of summer and childhood, and then suddenly there was the North Sea, grey and restless and absolutely magnificent. A man was walking a dog that appeared to be composed entirely of enthusiasm and wet fur. He nodded at me and said, "First time?" I admitted it was. "You will come back," he said. "They always come back. The Germans, the English, even the Belgians. We are very tolerant." The dog shook itself vigorously over both of us, which he seemed to consider a fitting punctuation to this statement.

Back at the bungalow, I sat with a cup of tea and watched the light fade over the holiday park. Grietje had been right about the coffee machine. It was ruthlessly efficient and entirely devoid of character. I found myself smiling at the thought of her judgment upon it. There was something quietly wonderful about this place, about the way people simply appeared and offered you their version of the world without any of the performative friendliness you sometimes get in tourist spots. Henk and his grass-mowing philosophy. Grietje and her wellington boots. The man with the dog who had announced my inevitable return like it was a weather forecast.

I thought about my sat nav mishap and how it had somehow set the tone for everything that followed. Perhaps getting slightly lost was the only way to find whatever this was. The tap gurgled companionably in the background. Outside, a bicycle bell rang somewhere in the dusk. I had been in Noordwijk for less than six hours, and already it felt like the beginning of something rather than just a holiday. The sheep, I decided, had known exactly what they were doing. Sometimes you need to go the wrong way to end up somewhere worth being.