I have never been more relieved to see a set of house keys in a tiny plastic box in my entire life. Six hours, two traffic jams near Antwerp, and one spectacularly ill-judged decision to rely on my phone's GPS rather than actual road signs had brought me to Sint Annannland, Zeeland, clutching a crumpled booking confirmation and the faint hope that I had not just driven to the wrong country entirely.

The mishap, because there is always a mishap with me, occurred roughly forty minutes from the property. In a moment of spectacular overconfidence, I decided I could navigate the final stretch without the sat nav. How hard could it be? Zeeland is flat, watery, and largely composed of dykes. There are not exactly mountains to confuse matters. Yet somehow I found myself on a narrow cycle path, my estate car wedged between two determined Dutch cyclists who looked at me with the kind of weary patience usually reserved for toddlers and very lost tourists. I reversed approximately half a mile, which in a vehicle the size of a small boat, on a path designed for bicycles, felt like performing a three-point turn in a broom cupboard. The cyclists did not even need to say anything. Their expressions conveyed volumes.

By the time I reached the holiday home, my hands were still slightly trembling on the steering wheel. The key collection point was straightforward enough, a small lockbox near the entrance, and I fumbled with the code like a burglar having a crisis of confidence. The door opened with a satisfying click, and I stepped inside with that particular mixture of exhaustion and tentative excitement that defines the first moment of any self-catering holiday.

The first thing that struck me was the silence. Not the oppressive, heavy silence of isolation, but the calm, watery quiet of a place properly removed from ordinary bustle. Through the windows, I could see the marina, boats sitting still and patient in their moorings, the water doing that particular silvery-grey thing it does in Zeeland when the light is fading. The property had that clean, slightly pine-scented smell of somewhere recently prepared, and I found myself immediately hunting for the kettle with the desperate urgency of a man who had been surviving on service station coffee since Dover.

I made a cup of tea, because I am British and this is how we process emotion, and stood in the kitchen properly looking around for the first time. The place was comfortable without being fussy, the kind of accommodation that understands its job is to be a base rather than a destination in itself. A small terrace outside promised mornings with a view of the water, and I caught myself already planning a breakfast there, already adjusting to the slower rhythm of the place.

What I had not expected was the immediate sense of having arrived somewhere that would not demand very much of me. There was no pressure to be impressed, no overwhelming grandeur, just a well-appointed house in a genuinely peaceful corner of the Netherlands. I thought about my cycle path debacle and laughed, properly laughed, for the first time since the M25. Some journeys are worth the ridiculousness of their final stages, and some first impressions, I was beginning to realise, improve precisely because of the minor chaos that precedes them.

I unpacked badly, leaving most things in suitcases, and took my tea outside to watch the last of the daylight disappear over the water.