I should have known the Sat Nav was up to no good when it started pronouncing Polish village names with the confidence of a man who's only ever been to Bognor Regis. "Turn left onto Droga," it declared, as if that meant anything to anyone. Three hours out of Szczecin and I'd already been down two farm tracks, one of which involved a very tense conversation with a tractor driver who spoke no English and I spoke no Polish beyond "dwa piwa," which felt inappropriate given the circumstances.

The mishap came proper when I finally reached Nowe Warpno itself. I spotted what I thought was my holiday cottage, a charming wooden number with a proper rustic balcony, and marched straight up to the door with the sort of bravado you only possess when you're absolutely wrong. The key didn't work. I jiggled. I swore. I tried the back door. I was mid-knock when an elderly woman appeared at the neighbouring fence, smoking what I can only describe as an extremely serious cigarette.

"Pan jest z Anglii?" she asked, which I later learned meant "Are you from England?" though at the time I thought she was asking about my health. I nodded enthusiastically. She pointed at the actual cottage, two doors down, and said something that made her husband appear from the shed, wiping his hands on a rag that had seen things. He didn't speak English either, but he spoke the universal language of pointing at a numpty and chuckling.

Within five minutes I had three neighbours. The smoking woman, whose name turned out to be Halina, had summoned her sister Danuta from across the lane. Danuta was seventy-odd, wearing a floral housecoat that could've stopped traffic, and immediately took charge of my suitcase as if I'd been assigned to her personally. "Anglik," she announced to no one in particular, with the same tone one might say "pigeon with broken wing."

Halina's husband, Tadeusz, insisted on helping with the actual key, which involved a complicated wiggle he'd perfected over forty years. "Tak," he kept saying, meaning "yes," though I wasn't sure what I was agreeing to. The cottage door finally yielded with a groan of wood that sounded almost apologetic.

I offered to make tea, which caused some confusion until Danuta produced her own flask of something herbal and considerably stronger. We sat on my new balcony, me with my sad English teabag, them with their mysterious Polish magic, and they told me about the lake. Not in English, mind. Halina spoke slowly in Polish, Danuta translated into gestures, and Tadeusz occasionally interjected with what I believe were fish-related opinions. I understood perhaps one word in twenty, yet somehow we covered the weather, my marital status (disappointing), and the exact location of the best mushroom-picking spot, which involved a lot of pointing at trees and miming something that might've been a wild boar.

A chap called Marek wandered over from the direction of the water, barefoot despite the October chill, carrying a bucket of what he proudly displayed as "ryby." Fish. Very small fish. He'd been out since dawn, he explained through Halina's translation, because "the big ones know Marek," which I initially took as bragging until Danuta clarified with a gesture of fish swimming away very quickly. Marek was a local legend, apparently, though whether for his fishing or his inability to keep his feet shod remained ambiguous.

By late afternoon I'd been furnished with a jar of pickled something, strict instructions about the rubbish collection that I definitely didn't understand, and an open invitation to Halina's nameday celebration, which I gathered involved more of the herbal flask situation. Danuta had reorganised my kitchen cupboards without asking, finding my teabags "sad" and replacing them with something she'd brought from home. Tadeusz had fixed a wobbly chair I'd not mentioned and left a screwdriver on the table with the air of a man passing on sacred knowledge.

As the light went over the lake, painting everything in that particular Polish golden hour that makes you forgive Sat Navs and wrong doors, I sat with my new collection of accidental friends and felt something shift. I'd arrived expecting solitude, a quiet week of walking and reading. Instead I'd been adopted by a committee of pensioners who found my incompetence genuinely entertaining.

Marek produced a harmonica from his bucket, because of course he had one, and played something mournful that Halina hummed along to. I didn't know the tune. I didn't know the words. But when Danuta pressed another cup of the herbal stuff into my hands and Tadeusz nodded at me with what I can only describe as grandfatherly approval, I realised this was exactly why you bother leaving home in the first place.

The Sat Nav never did apologise, mind. Some things remain unforgivable.