I should have known the sat nav was up to no good the moment it tried to send me through a canal. There we were, three hours into our journey from Harwich, bleary-eyed and craving a cuppa, when the robotic voice calmly instructed us to "turn left onto waterway." My wife gave me that look. You know the one. The look that says, "You booked this, you navigate it."

Vinkeveen, it turns out, is not actually a town you drive through so much as a collection of waterways, holiday homes, and extremely patient locals who have seen this exact scene play out a thousand times before. A kind man in a flat cap, walking what I can only describe as an enthusiastic sausage dog, pointed us toward the right path. Or rather, the right bridge. We had been circling the same patch of reeds for twenty minutes.

The property itself sits on the edge of the Vinkeveense Plassen, a sprawling network of lakes and peat pools that looks like someone took the Norfolk Broads and asked them to calm down a bit. Our little cottage-style place, all wooden cladding and generous windows, appeared through a tunnel of overhanging willows just as the afternoon light was turning golden. I may have said something embarrassingly poetic. My children, aged nine and twelve, were too busy arguing about who got the bigger bedroom to notice.

The mishap, because there is always a mishap with me, came during unloading. In my enthusiasm to explore, I managed to drop our entire food shop into the narrow gap between the car and the water's edge. Not into the water, thank goodness, but into a patch of nettles that seemed almost personally offended by my presence. There I was, hopping about in my holiday shorts, clutching a bag of pasta and regretting every life choice that had led to this moment. A heron watched from a nearby post. Judging me, I am certain of it.

But here is the thing about places like this. The embarrassment fades fast. Within an hour, we were sitting on the little wooden deck with proper mugs of tea, watching a family of coots paddle past like they owned the place. The children had already found the field opposite, where they claimed a rope swing hanging from an ancient oak tree. My wife was reading an actual paperback, something I had not seen her do in years. And I was doing absolutely nothing, which is harder than it sounds when you are used to filling every minute.

The cottage itself has that satisfying simplicity you do not find in fancier places. No fussy ornaments, no pretence. Just clean lines, a kitchen that actually has sharp knives, and beds that do not squeak. The sort of place where you immediately stop worrying about muddy shoes or dripping swimming costumes. We are here for a week, and already I can feel my shoulders dropping.

Tomorrow we might hire a little boat, or cycle to the nearby village for pancakes. Or we might not. That is the whole point, I think. To let the water set the pace, to let the herons judge in peace, to remember that a holiday does not need to be packed with spectacle to be worth having. Though I will definitely be checking where I stand before I unload the car next time.