I have never been so happy to see a bungalow in all my life. After six hours of driving from Gdansk, during which my sat nav decided that "shortcut" meant "mystery tour of every rural track in northern Poland," I finally rolled into Sarbinowo ready to collapse into a deckchair and not move for a week. The mishap came when I realised, standing at the property gate with two heavy suitcases and a crumpled booking printout, that I had left the key code on the kitchen table back home. Cue twenty minutes of frantic phone calls, a slightly too cheerful email to the property manager, and the humbling experience of explaining my own stupidity to a very patient Polish woman who eventually just told me the code again. I am forty-three years old. I should be better at this.

The bungalow itself was one of those modest, well-kept places you find all along this stretch of Baltic coast. White plaster, red roof tiles, a small garden that someone had clearly put proper effort into. Mine had a little terrace with plastic chairs that wobbled if you leaned back too far, which I discovered immediately and repeatedly. But the sun was beating down, the sky was that particular Baltic blue that looks almost painted on, and I had a stack of books that had been glaring at me unread for months. I dumped my cases inside without unpacking, made a terrible cup of instant coffee, and collapsed into that wobbly chair. The doing of very little had officially begun.

Sarbinowo is not a place that demands much of you. That is precisely the point. The beach is a short wander away, a proper sandy stretch that fills with Polish families in summer and empties out to peaceful stretches in the early morning and evening. I took to walking down there before breakfast, not for exercise or self-improvement, but because the light on the water at that hour makes you feel slightly smug about being awake. I would stand there in my mismatched holiday clothes, watching the fishing boats and the occasional determined swimmer, then wander back with no particular hurry. Sometimes I bought a pastry from the little shop near the beach entrance. Sometimes I did not. The decision felt genuinely consequential.

The days developed a rhythm so lazy it barely qualified as rhythm. Morning coffee on the wobbly chair, watching the garden insects go about their business with far more purpose than I intended to show. A slow walk to the beach, perhaps a paddle if the water was not too Baltic-chilly, which it mostly was. Then back to the bungalow for the serious business of reading in the sun until I felt drowsy enough for a proper doze. I had brought a novel I had been pretending to read since March. I finished it in two days and immediately started it again, because what else was I going to do, think?

The local area offers gentle exploration if you can be bothered, which sometimes I could and sometimes I could not. A stroll to the nearby shops for provisions, nodding at the same other holidaymakers until we became vaguely recognised faces. The little harbour area where fishermen mend nets and pretend not to notice tourists taking photographs. I found a bench there that became "my" bench through sheer repetition, sitting with an ice cream and watching boats that were going nowhere in particular. There is something deeply satisfying about watching other people work when you have absolutely no intention of doing any yourself.

Evenings were for simple food cooked badly in the bungalow kitchen, eaten on the terrace as the light faded. I discovered that Polish sausage and mediocre red wine taste absolutely magnificent when consumed in a plastic chair with sandy feet. The neighbours, a family from Warsaw, would sometimes wave. We never progressed to conversation, which suited us all perfectly. Holiday neighbours are best kept at exactly that distance.

By the third day I had stopped checking my watch. By the fifth I had genuinely forgotten what day it was and had to work it out from the rubbish collection schedule. This felt like an achievement of sorts. The books got read, the tan got slightly uneven, the wobbly chair got wobblier. I did not see any famous sights, tick any boxes, or have any stories that would impress anyone at a dinner party. I just slowed down until I matched the pace of the place itself, which is not very paced at all.

On my final morning I sat in that chair with my terrible coffee and watched a bee struggle heroically with a flower head too big for it. I thought about all the holidays where I had rushed about seeing things, taking photographs of experiences I barely had, coming home more tired than I left. This was better. This was enough. I packed slowly, deliberately badly, and drove away already planning when I could come back and do absolutely nothing all over again.