I should have known the sat nav was up to no good the moment it tried to send us through what looked like someone's beetroot field. There we were, three hours out of Poznan, two children asking if we were nearly there for the forty-seventh time, and me insisting we ignore the gadget in favour of what I called "instinct" and my wife called "stubbornness." The gravel track petered out into mud. A very large dog observed us from a gatepost with the weary patience of someone who has seen this exact scene a hundred times before.

Turning round in a farmyard while trying to explain to a Polish grandmother that we were not, in fact, lost tourists seeking directions to Gniezno took twenty minutes and most of my dignity. My wife found the proper route in roughly forty seconds on her phone. We arrived at Wilcze with me wearing most of a chocolate croissant and what I can only describe as agricultural mud on my left shoe.

But then you step out of the car and the whole sorry journey simply stops mattering. The place sits among proper Polish farmland, not the manicured version you see in brochures, but the real working sort with golden fields stretching off and the occasional stork circling overhead. The house itself is one of those solid, unhurried buildings that looks like it has been there long enough to have opinions about modern life. Red roof, sensible walls, a garden that has clearly been loved by someone who understands that grass is meant to be sat upon rather than merely admired.

The key was exactly where promised, which I mention only because my track record with holiday rentals suggests this is never guaranteed. The door opened with that satisfying weight that tells you a building was constructed before everything became hollow and provisional. Inside, the smell hit first - that particular Polish countryside combination of wood, something baked from the neighbouring farm, and the faint promise of the forest not far off. My daughter announced it smelled "like a proper holiday," which is her highest available praise.

The living area spreads out with the generous proportions that make family holidays actually function. No one is on top of anyone else. There is space for a child to build an elaborate Lego situation without it becoming a diplomatic incident. The kitchen looks like someone actually cooks in it rather than merely photographing it for a listing. I found myself already planning the morning coffee, the evening beer on the terrace, the slow breakfasts that have no particular purpose beyond existing in themselves.

The bedrooms upstairs have that slight unevenness to the floors that comes from decades of Polish winters doing their slow work. It is not polished or perfected, and that is precisely the point. You want somewhere that breathes, that has character without performing it for your approval. My son claimed the room with the view across the fields and immediately established a nest of books and charging cables.

By evening we had unpacked with the lazy efficiency of people who have nowhere particular to be. I stood on the terrace with that first Polish beer, watching the light do that extraordinary flat golden thing it does across Wielkopolska farmland, and felt the particular pleasure of having got somewhere worth the minor indignities of arrival. The dog from the neighbouring farm wandered past to inspect our credentials. I raised my bottle in what felt like appropriate greeting.

Tomorrow we might walk to the lake, or we might not. The children have already discovered the garden's capacity for hide-and-seek. My wife is reading on the sofa with her feet up. I have mud on my shoe and absolutely nowhere else I need to be.