I have never been brilliant with directions, so the fact that we made it to Nowe Warpno at all feels like something of a personal triumph. My partner had done the sensible thing and loaded the sat nav, but I had insisted on being navigator, armed with nothing but a printed map and misplaced confidence. Somewhere around the final stretch of the A6, I managed to confuse a left turn with a very much not-left turn, and we spent twenty minutes winding through lanes that seemed to grow narrower and more apologetic with every metre. We passed a field of very judgmental-looking goats. I waved. They did not wave back.

By the time we spotted the sign for Nowe Warpno, I had developed what can only be described as a profound respect for Polish road numbering. The mishap had cost us half an hour and whatever remained of my dignity, but it had also delivered us to the edge of Szczecin Lagoon at that golden hour when everything looks slightly magical and forgiving. The water glimmered. The pine trees stood to attention. Even the goats, had they bothered to follow, might have softened their critique.

The property sat tucked along a quiet lane, the sort of place where you immediately notice how loudly your car engine sounds and feel briefly guilty about it. We stepped out into pine-scented air that felt almost embarrassingly clean after the motorway. I stood there doing that thing where you breathe deliberately and tell yourself you are definitely a nature person now, despite all evidence to the contrary. My partner was already at the boot, wrestling with a suitcase that had somehow expanded during the journey. I helped eventually. I am mentioning this so she cannot say I did not.

The first thing that struck me about the house was how thoroughly it had settled into its surroundings. Not in that overly rustic way that makes you worry about plumbing, but in the comfortable manner of somewhere that knows exactly what it is. Wooden cladding, a proper pitched roof, windows that actually open wide enough to let the outside in. I pushed one and was immediately rewarded with the sound of water somewhere nearby and what I choose to believe was a nightingale, though my ornithology extends precisely as far as recognising pigeons.

Inside smelled of timber and faintly of something herby that I later discovered was dried lavender from the garden. The living space opened up with that satisfying sense of proportion you rarely find in holiday rentals, where someone has actually thought about where light falls in the afternoon. I found myself standing in the middle of the room turning slowly, the way people do in property programmes when they are pretending to consider the feng shui. My partner gave me a look. I stopped turning.

The kitchen overlooked a small terrace where wooden furniture sat waiting with the patience of furniture that has nowhere else to be. Beyond that, a glimpse of water through the trees. I had planned to unpack immediately, to establish order, to be the sort of person who hangs clothes within twenty minutes of arrival. Instead I found myself on that terrace with a cup of tea made from a bag I had fished from the glove compartment, because the shops could wait and the moment could not.

That first evening, we walked down to the water's edge as the light faded. The lagoon lay still and wide, with the distant shore barely visible. A heron lifted off from the reeds with the unhurried confidence of something that has never once worried about sat navs. I thought about my wrong turn, the goats, the slight tension in the car that had dissolved somewhere around the first sight of pine forest. The mishap had become the story already, the little narrative wrinkle that made the arrival feel earned rather than merely arrived at.

We walked back as the first stars appeared, slightly mosquito-bitten, entirely content. The house waited with its windows yellow against the dark, and I remember thinking that sometimes getting slightly lost is exactly what brings you to the right place.