I'd never driven a left-hand-drive car with a boot full of Croatian wine before, and it showed. The journey from Split Airport to Makarska had been all shimmering Adriatic views and smug self-congratulation at my navigational skills, right up until I tried to reverse into the parking space at our holiday let and clipped a rather aggressive-looking olive tree. The tree was fine. My pride, and the passenger-side mirror, were not. Still, the sunset was doing that absurd Dalmatian thing where the whole sky turns the colour of a ripe peach, so I decided to treat the mirror as a seasonal sacrifice to the gods of autumn travel.

We'd deliberately picked late September, gambling on the Central Dalmatian Riviera's reputation for gentle shoulder-season magic. The crowds of August, we'd been told, would have melted away like ice in a rakija glass. What nobody mentioned was that the local cats apparently hadn't received this memo. Three of them immediately staged a sit-in on our terrace, eyeing our arrival with the entitled suspicion of seasoned hotel inspectors. I suspect they knew something we didn't.

The property sat perched above Makarska's curve of coastline, and that first evening revealed exactly why timing mattered. The summer blaze had softened into something you could actually sit in without seeking medical attention. We opened all the windows - proper old-fashioned shutters and everything - and let the warm air drift through carrying scents of pine and distant grilling fish. The swimming pool, which in July would have been a shared soup of humanity, lay there temptingly empty, the water still holding enough daytime warmth to be genuinely inviting rather than merely brave.

I woke early the next morning, that particular holiday wakefulness where your body hasn't adjusted to the lack of alarm. The light at that hour felt almost stolen, the September sun lower and more golden than its summer counterpart, casting long shadows across the terrace where last night's cats had left paw-prints in the condensation. Down in Makarska proper, the town was stretching itself awake with the unhurried pace of a place no longer performing for peak-season expectations. Fishermen mended nets at the harbour. Cafes opened their shutters without the rattle of desperation.

The seasonal shift meant practical differences too. The konoba we'd hoped to try was closed for its own holiday, owners presumably exhausted from three months of feeding the multitudes. We wandered instead to a place still open near the promenade, where the waiter had time to explain the menu properly and didn't flinch when I attempted three words of Croatian. The grilled sardines tasted of the sea and not of urgency.

By afternoon, the warmth had gathered properly but never turned oppressive. We walked the coastal path toward nearby coves, passing perhaps half a dozen other wanderers where hundreds would have trodden weeks before. The water remained swimmable, that crucial Adriatic clarity still intact, though you emerged with a slight autumn briskness rather than summer's languid float. I found myself grateful for the light jacket I'd almost left behind, the one that made evening terrace drinks possible rather than a test of endurance.

That mirror, incidentally, cost me forty euros and a lengthy pantomime at the local garage, where a man with magnificent eyebrows communicated entirely through shrugs and surprisingly expressive hand gestures. I didn't mind. The mishap had become part of the trip's texture, a small humbling that suited the season's quieter mood. Summer holidays demand perfection; autumn ones allow for the human.

On our final morning, I sat with coffee watching mist rise from the sea, the cats having apparently approved our tenancy. The Central Dalmatian Riviera in late September had given us warmth without warfare, beauty without the battle for it. I'd trade a mirror for that any day.