I should have known the Sat Nav was up to no good the moment it tried to send me through what looked like someone's vegetable patch. There we were, two hours out of Ljubljana, crawling along a road that grew narrower with every bend, my other half gripping the door handle and the kids in the back asking if we'd accidentally driven into a nature documentary. "Scenic route," I kept saying, with far more confidence than I felt. The scenic route, it turned out, was a dead end outside a farmyard where a very unimpressed dog announced our arrival to the entire valley.

Turning around on a slope that felt roughly equivalent to a black ski run, in a hire car the size of a small boat, remains one of my prouder driving achievements. My wife filmed the whole thing for posterity, or possibly for evidence.

When we finally found the proper lane to Mokronog and spotted the wooden sign for Gorenje Laknice, I felt that lovely flutter of relief that comes with knowing your holiday has actually begun. The cottage sat tucked among rolling hills with meadows stretching in every direction, the sort of landscape that makes you want to breathe out properly for the first time in months. A stone path led to a covered terrace where a wooden table already looked inviting, and somewhere nearby a stream was doing that gentle bubbling thing that instantly lowers your blood pressure.

The key was in the lockbox as promised, though getting it out involved a comedy of errors involving my reading glasses, a torch app, and the realisation that I'd been turning the combination the wrong direction for a solid three minutes. My daughter found this hilarious. I maintained what dignity I could.

Stepping inside, the place smelled of pine and something else I couldn't identify but immediately liked. Exposed wooden beams, a proper fireplace with logs stacked ready, furniture that looked like it had been chosen by someone who understood that holidays are for actually sitting down. The kitchen was compact but thoughtfully equipped, none of that holiday-let minimalism where you're expected to prepare dinner with a blunt knife and a single saucepan. My son disappeared upstairs to claim his bed before his sister could, which sparked the first negotiation of the week.

What struck me most was the quiet. Not silence exactly, there were birds and distant cattle and that stream I mentioned, but the absence of mechanical noise, traffic hum, the constant background static of everyday life. We stood on the terrace with mugs of tea made from the supplies we'd picked up in Trebnje, watching the light change across the hills as afternoon drifted into evening. Nobody checked their phone. Nobody mentioned work, or school, or any of the hundred obligations waiting back home.

I found myself thinking about how rarely we do this, how easy it is to fill every moment with doing rather than being. The dog from the wrong turn farmyard had clearly known something I didn't. Sometimes the scenic route, even the accidental one, gets you exactly where you need to be.