I should never have trusted the sat nav. There I was, bombing down what I can only describe as a tractor path masquerading as a road, convinced I'd somehow driven into a potato field rather than towards my holiday let in Stezyca. The potholes had potholes. My companion, bless her, had gone very quiet in the passenger seat, which I've learned means she's either praying or plotting my demise.

The mishap came when I spotted what I thought was a helpful local waving me down. I wound down the window, full of hope, only to realise the chap was actually trying to shoo a goose off the road. The goose won, obviously. They always do. By the time I'd reversed to let the standoff conclude, I'd managed to wedge the front wheel in a drainage ditch that my heroic sat nav had failed to mention. There we sat, hazards blinking, in what felt like the middle of absolutely nowhere, Pomerania.

Enter Kazimierz. He appeared from a garden that seemed to materialise from the hedgerow itself, a man of perhaps seventy with overalls that had seen harder decades than I have. He spoke no English. I speak Polish like a drunk toddler. Between us, though, we managed something beautiful. He produced a rope from somewhere, attached it to his ancient tractor with the confidence of a man who's rescued a thousand idiot tourists, and hauled us out while explaining, I think, something about the road being "not for cars like this" accompanied by gestures towards my modest hatchback that suggested it was essentially a toy.

His wife, Halina, emerged with tea. Proper tea, in glasses with metal holders, the way I hadn't seen since my grandmother's Polish neighbour in Leeds used to make it. She tutted at my shoes, which were admittedly now caked in something agricultural, and produced slippers from a cupboard that clearly existed for this exact purpose. Their kitchen smelled of dill and something frying that I couldn't identify but immediately wanted to eat forever. Through Kazimierz's enthusiastic pointing and Halina's occasional corrections, I learned they'd lived in this house since 1968, that their son was a dentist in Gdansk, and that I was the third lost foreigner this year. I felt simultaneously special and deeply unoriginal.

The property itself, when we finally reached it, was only another ten minutes away. A lovely wooden place near the lake, exactly as advertised, with a veranda I immediately pictured myself on with a book I'd never finish. But honestly? The delay was the holiday. Kazimierz had drawn me a map on the back of a fertiliser receipt, complete with warnings about which roads were "only for brave people" and where Halina's sister sold the best smoked fish. He'd marked their house too, with a little star and what I choose to believe was an invitation to return.

That evening, sitting on that veranda with a beer from the local shop where the woman had insisted on practicing her three English phrases on me, I found myself thinking about how I'd planned this trip around solitude and scenery. I'd got the scenery, certainly, lakes and forests and that particular golden light you get in northern Poland at about six in the evening. But the people, the unexpected, slightly chaotic human connections, that was what had already made it.

I still have that fertiliser receipt in my wallet. The smoked fish, by the way, was worth every wrong turn.