I should have known the holiday had truly begun when I got us lost before we'd even reached the cottage. We'd been driving for hours from the Eurotunnel, gliding through flat Dutch countryside that all looks reassuringly similar, which is precisely the problem. I missed the turn for Dishoek, carried on towards Middelburg with the confident stupidity of a man who refuses to use satnav properly, and ended up on a road that seemed to lead exclusively to industrial greenhouses. My partner sat in silence, which was worse than complaining. By the time we reversed our error and found the proper lane down to the coast, I'd aged about five years and she'd finished an entire packet of wine gums.

The cottage appeared at the end of a sandy track, tucked behind dunes with that particular Zeeland arrangement of red roof tiles and weathered wooden cladding that makes everything look quietly maritime. I was still apologising as I fumbled with the key box, dropping the code sheet into a puddle that had absolutely not been there a moment before. Some holidays begin with champagne; ours began with me kneeling in wet gravel, muttering.

Then we stepped inside, and the silliness of the journey fell away. The place smelled of pine and salt, that impossible combination you only get in coastal houses that have spent decades breathing the North Sea. Huge windows faced south towards the dunes, and through them I could see marram grass bending in a breeze I couldn't yet feel. My partner opened the doors to the terrace without speaking. We stood there like two people who'd forgotten what fresh air tasted like.

That first afternoon set the pattern for everything that followed. We didn't unpack properly. We didn't plan excursions or check opening times. We carried our bags to the bedroom, made a pot of tea that went cold because we kept forgetting to drink it, and simply sat on those wooden terrace chairs watching light move across the dunes. Someone was flying a kite far down the beach, a red smudge against pale sky. The sea itself was invisible from where we sat, hidden behind the dune ridge, but its presence hummed in the background like a held note.

I had brought three books and finished none of them, which I consider a mark of complete success. Each morning I'd carry one down to the little sandy path that winds through the dunes, find a hollow in the grass where the wind dropped, and read perhaps four pages before dozing off or watching a beetle negotiate a blade of grass with more determination than I've ever applied to anything. The beach at Dishoek is wide and pale and surprisingly empty on weekdays, the kind of shoreline where you can walk for half an hour and meet only dog-walkers who nod as if you belong there too.

We developed rituals of magnificent laziness. Coffee on the terrace watching mist burn off the dunes. Late breakfasts of proper Dutch bread from the baker in Koudekerke, which is barely ten minutes by bicycle along flat lanes lined with poplars. Afternoons when I would declare my intention to "explore" and manage perhaps two hundred metres down the coastal path before finding another comfortable spot to sit. My partner took to sketching, though she claims she cannot draw, producing endless studies of the same dune curve that somehow never looked identical twice.

The village itself is barely there, honestly, which suits it perfectly. A handful of houses, a hotel with a terrace where we once had bitterballen and beer while rain swept across the sea, a sense of being at the edge of something rather than in the middle. We cycled to Zoutelande one afternoon, attracted mostly by the promise of ice cream, and found another beach, another promenade, the same unhurried atmosphere. It felt less like sightseeing and more like confirming that yes, the world continues to be peaceful just around the corner.

What struck me most, I think, was how quickly I stopped wanting to achieve anything. At home I make lists, check boxes, feel vaguely guilty about unproductive hours. Here, productivity became watching a cloud's shadow cross the dune field. Success was finding the precise angle of terrace chair that supported an afternoon nap without subsequent back pain. One morning I spent forty minutes observing a spider construct its web between two marram stalks, and I cannot tell you a single useful thing I learned from this except that it happened, that I was present for it, that such witnessing has its own quiet value.

The weather blessed us mostly, that particular Dutch coastal brightness where the sky seems larger than physics should allow. Even grey days had their charm, sending us inside to light the wood burner and play cards with the lazy concentration of people who have nowhere else to be. I lost consistently, which seemed appropriate.

On our final morning I woke early and walked alone to the beach, something I'd meant to do daily and managed exactly once. The tide was out, the sand stretched to a distant silver line where water began. I stood there in borrowed wellies feeling the particular melancholy of holidays ending, but also something else, a kind of settledness I hadn't arrived with. The kite flyer from our first afternoon appeared again, or perhaps it was someone else, the same red diamond against grey morning sky. I waved, though they couldn't possibly see me, and walked back through dunes that were already becoming memory, already precious.

We left the key in the box without dropping anything, which felt like progress of a sort.