I have never been brilliant with directions, and my phone's GPS clearly shares this weakness. We had been winding through the Makarska hinterland for the best part of forty minutes, my wife reading out increasingly unhelpful instructions while I nodded along like someone who definitely knew where he was going. The children had reached that special stage of car journey hysteria where everything is either hilarious or grounds for a tribunal. Then, in a moment of pure genius, I followed a sign that looked promising and promptly reversed our estate car into a very solid stone wall belonging to someone's olive grove.

The wall was fine. My dignity was not. A lovely local chap appeared from nowhere, laughed heartily at the Englishman trying to fold a wing mirror back into shape, and pointed us down a track I would absolutely have dismissed as a footpath. Ten minutes later, we emerged at our holiday home and I understood why people bother with the drama of getting there.

The place sits tucked into the hillside above Makarska, nothing fancy from the approach, just a solid stone house with that particular creamy Dalmatian colour that seems to glow at sunset. My first job was checking the damage to the car, which mercifully amounted to a scuff and a mirror that now wobbles if you drive above fifty. My second job was standing on the terrace with a cold beer from the fridge, watching the sea appear and disappear between the pine trees, and deciding that this was exactly where I needed to be.

The children had already vanished inside, discovering the various delights of a house that is not our own. I could hear them arguing over who had which bedroom, a sound that travels remarkably well through open windows. The place smelled of clean linen and something faintly herby, probably the rosemary bush that had taken over most of the path to the front door. I made a mental note to cook with it, knowing perfectly well I would forget this ambition within twenty-four hours.

The kitchen was one of those gloriously practical Croatian affairs, all tiled surfaces and serious knives and a coffee maker that looked like it meant business. My wife immediately started investigating cupboards, that universal holiday ritual, while I examined the barbecue outside with the serious expression of a man who absolutely knows how to control charcoal. I do not, as it happens, but the terrace was begging for someone to attempt it.

By late afternoon we had established our pattern without even discussing it. The children splashing in the pool, which was small enough to feel private and deep enough to actually swim in. My wife reading on the lounger with that particular expression of someone who has temporarily forgotten about work emails. Me attempting to assemble a basic salad while the sun dropped behind the Biokovo mountains and turned everything golden and slightly unreal.

Dinner that first evening was a disaster of beautiful proportions. The local supermarket had provided excellent prawns, which I overcooked dramatically on my inaugural barbecue attempt. The children declared them "crunchy" with the devastating honesty only children possess. We ate bread and cheese and tomatoes instead, sitting outside until the mosquitoes arrived and drove us indoors, and I have rarely been happier with a failed meal.

What struck me most, lying awake that first night with the shutters open and the sound of distant music from Makarska floating up the hill, was how quickly the journey nonsense faded. The wrong turns, the wall incident, my wife's patient sighing, all of it became part of the story rather than the disaster it had felt like. That is the trick of holidays, I suppose, the alchemy that turns chaos into memory.

I woke to my youngest standing beside the bed asking if Croatia had different rules about breakfast times. It does not, but we made pancakes anyway, using a pan I suspect had never seen such abuse, eating on the terrace with the morning sun already warm on our faces. The pool glittered invitingly. The mountain haze suggested another hot day. Somewhere below, Makarska was waking up to another summer morning of coffee and boats and tourists making their own wrong turns.

We would wander down later, I decided, perhaps attempt the beach, definitely find a proper coffee. For now, the simple pleasure of nowhere to be and nothing required felt like the truest luxury. The wing mirror wobbled in my mind, then settled. Some things fix themselves with perspective. Others, like that mirror, require a more practical approach eventually. But not yet. Not on that first perfect morning, with my family around me and a whole week of doing very little stretched ahead like a promise I intended to keep.