I should have known the satnav was up to no good the moment it tried to send us through what looked like someone's cabbage patch. Twelve hours after leaving Calais, three wrong turns, and one spectacular argument about whether to trust Google or the bloke at the petrol station in Olsztyn, we finally crawled up the gravel track to our Majdy in Masuria. I use "crawled" advisedly. The last mile took twenty minutes because I was convinced we'd puncture something vital on the ruts left by what I can only assume was a very lost tank.

The mishap, then. We'd stopped in Warsaw for supplies, and in my wisdom I'd decided to be the hero who carried the cool box. Tripped on absolutely nothing, didn't I? Sent a two-litre bottle of Zywiec rolling under a parked Skoda, and spent a good five minutes on my hands and knees in a Lidl car park while my other half made that noise she makes when she's trying not to laugh and be cross simultaneously. The beer survived. My dignity did not.

But here's the thing about Masuria. The lakes have this way of slowing everything down before you've even realised you needed it. We rounded the final bend and there was our place, timber-clad and proper, with a deck that practically demanded someone sit on it with a drink. The lake was right there, not fifty metres off, still as a held breath. I'd expected postcard pretty and got something quieter, more lived-in. The sort of beauty that doesn't shout.

The owners had left the key in the old wooden box by the door, exactly as promised, with a note in slightly wobbly English telling us the rowing boat was ours to use and please not to set fire to the sauna. Fair enough. Inside smelled of pine and something else, something clean and warm that made me think of my grandmother's airing cupboard. The main room had these huge windows, floor to almost-ceiling, and I stood there like a proper lemon just staring at the water while my other half started the important business of working out the coffee situation.

I keep calling it a lake. It was more of a modest stretch, really, one of those Masurian fingers of water that connect and weave through the forests. You could see a couple of other properties across the way, but not so close that anyone would witness your inevitable attempts at paddleboarding. The deck had a proper table, the sort that seats eight and would clearly host several evenings of grilled kielbasa and increasingly competitive card games.

The funny thing about arriving somewhere after that long on the road is that your brain doesn't quite catch up. I kept expecting the next thing to go wrong. The boiler to be stone cold, the bed to be short-sheeted, some essential thing forgotten. Instead I found myself on that deck with a rescued beer, watching the light go soft over the pines, and feeling something in my shoulders actually loosen. The satnav mishaps, the Lidl floor show, the twelve-hour ache in my legs. They started to feel like the price of admission rather than the main story.

My other half appeared with two mugs of something strong and Polish, and we just sat there as the mosquitoes began their evening shift. Didn't say much. Didn't need to.