I should have known the sat nav was up to no good when it tried to send us through what looked like someone's allotment. There we were, three hours into our drive from Gdansk, two kids in the back asking if we were nearly there yet for the forty-seventh time, and me insisting we ignore the GPS and follow the actual road signs to Debki. My husband, ever the optimist, sided with the machine. Ten minutes later we were reversing out of a sandy track next to a field of very unimpressed-looking goats. The kids thought it was the best bit of the holiday so far.

We finally rolled up to the cottage just as the afternoon light was turning that particular honey colour you only seem to get near the Baltic. The place sat tucked among pine trees, all wooden cladding and steep roof, looking like something from one of those Scandinavian crime dramas minus the actual crime. I had one of those moments where you worry the photos were too good to be true, but stepping out of the car, smelling pine resin and salt air mixed together, I felt my shoulders drop about three inches.

The key was in the lockbox exactly as promised, though it took me a solid five minutes of fumbling while the family watched, increasingly hungry and less patient. I blame the goat incident for frazzling my brain. Inside, the cottage opened up into a proper lived-in space, not one of those sterile rental places where you're afraid to sit down. Wooden beams, a kitchen that looked like someone actually cooked in it, and windows that framed the greenery outside like paintings. The kids shot upstairs to claim beds before we'd even brought the cases in, which resulted in a brief but intense negotiation involving who got the room with the better view of the trees.

I made the mistake of promising a quick trip to the beach before unpacking. Quick, I said. We were still in travelling clothes, I had sand in my shoes within twenty minutes of reaching the shore, and nobody wanted to come back. Debki's beach is one of those wide, sandy stretches that goes on forever, with dunes behind and the sea doing that particular Baltic thing of looking almost grey-green in the late light. The kids ran straight for the water, yelping at the cold, while I stood there in my jeans feeling like the only prepared parent in Poland. My husband, naturally, had thought to put shorts on underneath. He looked far too pleased with himself.

Back at the cottage, we made tea with the supplies we'd grabbed from a little shop in the village, sitting at the wooden table while the kids finally slowed down enough to eat bread and cheese and look slightly dazed. I caught myself watching them, hair still damp, faces pink from wind and sun, and had one of those soppy parental moments where you realise this is exactly why you bother with the sat nav disasters and the packing and the endless organisation. The cottage felt immediately like ours, just for this week, creaky floorboards and all.

We fell asleep that night to the sound of wind in the pines, nobody bothering to fully unpack, the beach towels still in a sandy heap by the door. I woke once, disoriented in the unfamiliar darkness, and lay there listening to the absolute quiet of the place, broken only by my husband's familiar snoring from the next room. The goat field felt very far away. Tomorrow, I decided, we would do properly nothing at all, and it would be brilliant.