I have never been so relieved to see a set of wooden steps in my life. After six hours in the car with two children asking "are we nearly there?" every eleven minutes, a wrong turn down what I can only describe as a glorified tractor path, and a minor incident involving a rogue carrier bag and the car's windscreen wiper, we finally arrived at our little place in Rowy. The bag, for the record, had been my fault. I'd opened the window at a petrol station near Gdansk, it had fluttered out, and I'd spent the next twenty kilometres convinced I'd littered a Polish motorway with our sandwiches. Turns out the sandwiches were safely squashed beneath someone's seat. The bag had merely wedged itself under the wiper blade, flapping at me accusingly for the remainder of the journey like a plastic flag of parental incompetence.

Rowy sits on that stretch of Baltic coast where Poland decides to get properly sandy. Not pebbly, not rocky, but proper childhood-memory sand that gets into everything and stays there until Christmas. Our cottage, booked through Novasol, was one of those modest wooden affairs that looks slightly too small from the outside and then surprises you by swallowing your entire family's chaos without complaint. I stepped through the door expecting cramped quarters and instead found a living space that managed to be both cosy and genuinely functional. The children bolted past me to investigate sleeping arrangements, leaving my husband and me in the doorway with our arms full of bags and that particular dazed expression that follows long drives.

The first thing that struck me was the smell. Not the chemical sharpness of some holiday lets, but wood and something faintly salty, as if the sea had politely introduced itself through the walls. I later discovered this was partly because someone had left the bathroom window ajar, but I prefer my romantic interpretation. The kitchen was compact in that way that forces you to become organised or perish. I immediately began planning simple meals: breakfasts of scrambled eggs and bread from the village shop, evening barbecues if the weather held, absolutely nothing ambitious because ambition on holiday is how you end up weeping over a failed souffle while everyone else eats crisps.

The children reappeared to announce that one of them had claimed the top bunk and the other was "fine with it actually," which I knew from experience meant negotiations would continue for approximately three days. We dumped our bags and I made the obligatory cup of tea using the provided kettle, which worked with the enthusiastic efficiency of something that understood its purpose in life. Standing at the small kitchen window, I could see nothing but pine trees and a glimpse of what might have been sky or might have been more pine trees. The Baltic was close enough to taste but not yet visible, which created a peculiar anticipation, like unwrapping a present slowly.

My husband attempted to operate the television, failed, declared it "probably for the best," and opened a beer instead. This set the tone nicely. The children discovered a deck of cards in a drawer and began a game whose rules seemed to involve shouting and occasional accusations of cheating. I sat on the small sofa with my tea, feeling the particular loosening that happens when you finally stop moving after a long journey.

By evening we had walked the short path through the pines to the beach, returned with sand in our shoes and a collection of smooth stones that the children insisted were precious, and eaten a supper of bread and cheese that tasted better than it had any right to. The cottage had warmed around us, becoming ours through the simple act of occupation. I found myself reflecting, as I often do on first holiday evenings, on how much of family life is spent rushing between obligations, and how strange and precious it feels to simply be together in a small wooden house near the sea, with nothing demanded of any of us until morning.

The carrier bag was still attached to the wiper when I checked. I left it there as a reminder that perfection is neither possible nor particularly interesting, then went back inside to lose spectacularly at cards.