I should have known the sat nav was up to no good when it tried to send me through what looked like someone's back garden. There I was, rattling down a dirt track in Pomerania with a boot full of shopping and a growing suspicion that technology had failed me yet again. The potholes were doing terrible things to my carefully packed eggs. I had visions of arriving at our holiday home in Nowe Warpno with nothing but yolk and regret.

We found the proper road eventually, if you can call a lane barely wider than the car proper. My partner sat in the passenger seat making that face, the one that says "I told you to download the map" without actually speaking. I chose to focus on the scenery instead. The Szczecin Lagoon glimmered through the pines, and somewhere in the distance I could smell woodsmoke and something else, something that made my stomach rumble despite the stress of the journey.

The house itself was a proper charmer, all timber and generous windows, with a deck that practically demanded a glass of wine and some serious lounging. But first, the kitchen. I am a firm believer that you can tell everything about a self-catering property from its cooking arrangements, and this one did not disappoint. Proper hob, decent oven, and crucially, a fridge with actual space for the ambitious shopping I'd done back in Szczecin. The eggs, miraculously, had survived.

That first evening we kept things simple. I'd picked up some kielbasa from a roadside stall, the kind of smoked sausage that makes British bangers feel a bit apologetic by comparison. Fried it up with onions, threw together a rough salad from whatever looked least bruised in my shopping bags, and ate on that deck with the lagoon turning gold in the sunset. We drank beer that was still cold from the car, because of course I'd forgotten to put it in the cool bag. Warm car beer tastes of adventure, I told myself. My partner made the face again.

The next morning I attempted the local market, which I had been assured was the beating heart of Nowe Warpno's food scene. What I had not been told was that it started at an hour that only farmers and the pathologically enthusiastic consider reasonable. I arrived at half past eight feeling rather pleased with myself, only to find the serious shoppers were already packing up. A woman selling honey took pity on my bleary expression and sold me the last of her wildflower jars along with a lecture, delivered entirely in Polish with expressive hand gestures, that I can only assume was about the virtues of early rising. The honey was magnificent, dark and complex, and I ate it straight from the jar with a spoon that evening while my partner was in the shower. Some holiday indulgences are between a person and their conscience.

The fish was what really got me, though. A small shop near the water, nothing fancy, just fresh catches from the lagoon and the Baltic beyond. I bought herring because it felt right, because this is the corner of Poland where fish has always mattered more than meat. Back at the house I attempted a proper Polish preparation, all vinegar and onion and false confidence. It was not a complete success. The herring was excellent, my handling of it less so. We ended up picking out the larger onion pieces and eating it anyway, because when you are on holiday and the view is good and the beer is cold, culinary perfection matters rather less than you might think.

I improved, though. That is the thing about self-catering, about having a proper kitchen and a few days to settle in. By the third evening I was making pierogi with a filling of mushrooms I'd found at a slightly better-timed market visit, frozen because fresh were not in season but still properly Polish, still earthy and good. The dumplings were misshapen, some burst in the boiling water, but the ones that survived were genuinely decent. My partner said so without making any face at all, which I took as the highest praise.

We ate smoked fish on the beach one afternoon, bought from a van that appeared as if by magic near the water's edge. Mackerel, I think, though my Polish remains shamefully poor and I mostly pointed and smiled. It came wrapped in paper, still warm from the smoker, and we tore it apart with our fingers like proper barbarians while gulls circled hopefully overhead. Sand got in everything. It was one of the best meals of the whole trip.

Looking back, I think that was what I loved most about staying there. Not the grand gestures or the carefully planned restaurant meals, but the small daily negotiations with a kitchen that was not my own, ingredients I did not fully understand, markets that operated on rhythms I had not yet learned. The honey eaten in secret. The herring that humbled me. The pierogi that finally, eventually, worked. Food tastes different when you have to earn it, when you have navigated potholes and misunderstood opening hours and the particular challenge of cooking in an unfamiliar space.

On our last morning I made scrambled eggs with the survivors of that original battered dozen, plus the last of the wildflower honey drizzled on toast. We ate slowly, delaying the packing, watching the lagoon do its morning shimmer. The sat nav sat dark and innocent on the table, already plotting some fresh betrayal for the journey home. I did not care. I had shopped and cooked and eaten my way through a small corner of Pomerania, and I was leaving with sand in my shoes and a jar of honey in my bag and the certain knowledge that I would be back, earlier to the market next time, perhaps slightly less ambitious with the herring, but hungry for more of whatever this quiet place wanted to feed me.