I should have known the holiday was going to be eventful when I managed to leave my carefully prepared folder of printed directions sitting on the kitchen table in Manchester. There I was, trundling down the D8 in our hired Fiat, squinting at road signs in Croatian and pretending I absolutely knew where I was going. My partner, ever patient, suggested we stop for a coffee in Split. I agreed, mostly because I needed to buy time while frantically downloading offline maps on patchy roaming data.

Three hours, two wrong turns, and one deeply questionable service station burek later, we finally spotted the sea glinting between the pines. Makarska. The name alone sounds like someone sighing with relief after a long journey, which rather fit the moment.

The property sits up on the hillside, and I will confess that reversing up the steep approach gave me a sweat that no amount of Mediterranean breeze could fix. But then we stepped out onto the terrace, and there it was: the Biokovo mountains rising behind us, the Adriatic spreading out below, and somewhere in the middle distance, the promise of dinner.

That first evening, we did what any sensible British traveller does after a day of navigational incompetence. We walked down to the harbour, found the nearest konoba that looked sufficiently unpretentious, and ordered grilled sardines and a carafe of local white wine. The fish arrived whole, eyeing me with what I felt was unnecessary judgment. I am not ashamed to say I made a complete hash of filleting them, sending bits of spine flying onto the neighbouring table. The elderly Croatian gentleman there found this hilarious, demonstrated the proper technique with the patience of a man who has watched many foreigners struggle, and insisted we share his prsut. That is the Dalmatian ham, air-dried in the mountain wind, and it tastes like someone has distilled patience itself into pork form.

The next morning, properly ashamed of my fish butchery, I decided redemption lay in cooking. The property has a decent kitchen, and more importantly, a barbecue on that terrace with the view. We walked to the market near the old town, where stalls overflowed with tomatoes that actually smell of tomatoes, bundles of wild asparagus, and bottles of olive oil pressed from groves you can see from the road. I bought too much, as one does, including a hunk of aged Pag cheese that the vendor made me taste three times before she would sell it to me. She was right to be cautious. It is potent stuff, salty and sharp, the sort of cheese that announces itself in a room.

My cooking attempt that evening was ambitious. I had plans for a proper peka, the traditional Dalmatian slow-cooked dish, but lacking the requisite domed lid and open fire, I improvised with the barbecue and a lot of aluminium foil. The octopus I had proudly selected from a fishmonger's bucket turned out to be rather more octopus than my foil contraption could manage. It was edible, certainly, and the potatoes soaked in white wine and rosemary beneath it were genuinely excellent. But the octopus itself had the texture of a rubber bath mat. We laughed, opened more wine, and agreed that some dishes require generations of practice and the proper equipment.

We ate out more after that, though I did find my groove with simpler grilling. Fresh sea bass, just scaled and gutted by a man in a harbour shack, rubbed with garlic and local olive oil, cooked until the skin crackled. Mussels from the nearby estuary, steamed open with nothing but their own liquor and a squeeze of lemon. Breakfast became a ritual of fresh figs from a tree we found on a wander, eaten with yoghurt and honey on the terrace while the morning haze burned off the water.

The konobas became our evening religion. There is one tucked into the old town's stone alleys, family-run, where the menu changes with whatever the father catches that morning. His daughter explained the wines with the enthusiasm of someone who has recently discovered she lives in an excellent region and wants everyone to know. We drank Plavac Mali, robust and dark, and Posip, crisp and golden, and something called Bogdanusa that I cannot pronounce correctly to this day. Each glass came with a small plate of anchovies or pickled vegetables, the Dalmatian habit of greeting appetite before satisfying it.

On our last evening, walking back up the hill with full stomachs and the warm contentment that comes from a week of eating well, I reflected on my failed octopus. There is something humbling about attempting another culture's food in their own landscape, with their own ingredients, and discovering how much technique and tradition separate enthusiasm from mastery. I did not master Dalmatian cooking in a week. But I ate exceptionally well, made friends over spilled fish bones, and learned that the best meals are often the ones where you surrender to someone else's expertise.

We are already planning a return, and this time I will bring proper directions and lower culinary ambitions. Though I might still attempt that peka. Third time lucky, perhaps.