I should have known the sat nav was up to no good when it tried to send us through what looked like someone's back garden in rural Poland. Three hours out of Warsaw, two tired children in the back, and my husband Mark doing that thing where he grips the steering wheel like he's trying to throttle it. "Racibor Kolonia," I kept saying, rolling the name around hopefully. "Sounds lovely, doesn't it? Like something from a storybook."

The mishap came ten minutes from our destination, when I confidently directed Mark down a track that turned out to be a logging road. Our sensible family estate, loaded with suitcases and a cool bag full of squashed sandwiches, bounced along until we met a very large tractor coming the other way. The farmer looked at us with the weary patience of someone who has seen this exact scene a hundred times before. Through gestures and my terrible Polish, we established that I had missed the proper turning by roughly half a mile. Mark reversed for what felt like three kilometres while I made apologetic faces in the rear-view mirror. The children found this hilarious, of course. Nothing entertains a seven-year-old quite like parental incompetence.

When we finally found the right lane, threading between pine trees and past a small lake glinting in the afternoon sun, the tension dissolved almost instantly. The property sat at the edge of Racibor village, a traditional Masurian cottage with weathered wooden walls and a steep pitched roof that looked like it had been there since before anyone thought to put it on a map. A proper rural Polish house, not pretending to be anything else.

Stepping out of the car, the first thing that hit me was the quiet. Not silence exactly, there were birds everywhere, and somewhere in the distance a dog having opinions about something. But the absence of traffic, of that constant urban hum, felt almost physical. Like taking off a heavy coat you had forgotten you were wearing.

The owner had left the key in a small metal box by the door, along with a handwritten note and a jar of something that turned out to be pickled mushrooms from her own woods. I love that about Polish country hospitality, the complete absence of fuss paired with these small, personal gestures. No reception desk, no laminated information folder, just trust and pickled produce.

Inside, the cottage smelled of pine and old wood. The living area had a wood-burning stove that immediately became the children's obsession, though it was warm enough that we would not need it for a day or two. Beamed ceilings, simple furniture that had clearly been chosen for comfort rather than style, and windows that framed the garden like paintings. The kitchen was compact but properly equipped, not one of those holiday rentals where you open a cupboard to find a single bent fork and a tin opener from 1973.

I stood in the doorway while Mark unloaded the car, watching late afternoon light move across the grass. A family of ducks was making its way across the small pond at the bottom of the garden, the drake clearly in charge and making a terrible fuss about it. Somewhere nearby, a cuckoo started up. I found myself thinking about how rarely I stand still like this, how the holiday had not really begun until this exact moment of doing absolutely nothing.

The children discovered the garden swing, abandoned their screens without being asked, and immediately began an elaborate game involving being explorers in a dangerous wilderness. The dangerous wilderness was a very tidy vegetable patch with some excellent rhubarb.

That first evening, we walked the few hundred metres to the lake shore as the light faded. The water was perfectly still, reflecting the pines on the far bank. Mark and I sat on a rough wooden bench while the children threw stones with the solemn concentration that children apply to this task. We talked about nothing in particular, the kind of meandering conversation that only seems possible when you have escaped your normal surroundings.

Back at the cottage, I made a terrible attempt at cooking with the local mushrooms, which turned out to be stronger flavoured than expected. We ended up having bread and cheese for supper, sitting at the wooden table with the windows open to the cool evening air. The children fell asleep almost instantly, exhausted by fresh air and swing-related exertions.

Lying in bed later, listening to unfamiliar night sounds through the open window, I thought about how the best holidays often begin with some minor disaster. The wrong turn, the squashed sandwiches, my mushroom catastrophe. Without those, would I remember this first evening so clearly? Probably not. The mishaps force you to pay attention, to be present in a way that smooth perfection never quite manages.

I woke once in the night to absolute darkness, no light pollution reaching this corner of Masuria. For a moment I felt disoriented, almost floating. Then I heard Mark breathing beside me, and somewhere outside, an owl. I smiled into the blackness and went back to sleep, already looking forward to morning coffee in that garden, watching the ducks conduct their important business, and doing as close to nothing as I could manage for a solid week.