I have never been so grateful for a sat nav with a sense of humour. We were somewhere between Gdansk and what felt like the middle of absolutely nowhere when ours decided to stage a small rebellion. "Turn left," it commanded, straight into a field of very tall corn. My partner, Dave, gave me that look. You know the one. The "you promised this would be charming" look. I had indeed promised charming. I had promised rustic. I had not promised an impromptu agricultural survey.

It was late September when we finally found the proper road to Stezyca, and I do not think I have ever been so aware of a season making its presence known. The trees were having what I can only describe as a final fling before the serious business of winter. Every shade of yellow, orange and something approaching burgundy lined the lanes. The light had that particular quality it gets in autumn, all golden and slightly apologetic, as if the sun knows it is running out of steam but is determined to give you something lovely while it can.

The property itself sat at the edge of a small clearing, and the first thing that struck me was how completely the season had claimed it. The wooden exterior had darkened to something almost charcoal after months of summer sun and the first proper rains of autumn. Leaves in various states of decomposition formed a thick carpet around the base, and someone, presumably the owners, had stacked firewood with almost artistic precision against one wall. I remember thinking that this was a place that understood winter was coming and was not pretending otherwise. There is something rather comforting about that, I find. No false cheer, just practical preparation and the quiet confidence of a building that has seen many autumns come and go.

Dave attempted to be the hero with our bags and immediately discovered that autumn in Kashubia means dew that never quite dries. His dignified march across the grass ended with a squelch and some language I shall not repeat. The season had claimed its first victim, and we had not even reached the door.

Inside, the place smelled of woodsmoke and something else I could not identify. Cedar, perhaps, or just the particular mustiness of a building that spends half the year closed up against the cold. The windows were small by modern standards, which made perfect sense once I thought about it. This was a design that predated central heating, when keeping warmth in mattered more than flooding rooms with light. On that particular afternoon, with the sun already sliding towards the horizon at what felt like an indecently early hour, the effect was cocooning rather than gloomy. Each window framed a rectangle of autumn like a series of paintings hung deliberately off-centre.

I had worried slightly about arriving so late in the year. The tourist season was properly finished, the lake nearby too cold for swimming, the forests too damp for long walks without proper preparation. But standing there, watching Dave attempt to dry his shoes on the radiator and failing completely, I realised the season had given us something the summer crowds never get. The silence, for one thing. Absolute and complete, broken only by the occasional thump of something falling from a tree and the distant, rhythmic sound of someone chopping wood. The knowledge that we were temporary visitors in a landscape preparing for something we would not see. The lake would freeze, the snow would come, and the people who lived here year-round would carry on with the business of winter in a place that knows exactly how to do it.

We opened a bottle of something local and slightly too strong, and watched the last of the light leak out of the sky. The season had made us slow down before we even decided to. There was nowhere to rush to, nothing to squeeze in before closing time. Just the gathering dark, the gathering cold, and the particular pleasure of being somewhere that does not fight the time of year but moves with it, at exactly the pace it demands.