I have never been so relieved to see a goat in my entire life.

The trouble began at Split Airport, where I confidently marched past the car hire desk because I had, in my infinite wisdom, decided to book a villa in Klis and rely on public transport. "It's only five miles," I told my partner, waving my phone about like a compass. Three hours later, we were standing at a bus stop in a village that definitely was not Klis, watching an old man slowly paint his gate the exact colour of the Adriatic. He did not look up once. The bus had deposited us there with the cheerful indifference of a cat leaving a dead mouse.

We walked. Croatian countryside in July is not designed for English people carrying wheeled suitcases. The wheels gave up on a gravel track somewhere between two olive groves, and I performed an undignified sort of drag that I shall call "the Klis shuffle" should it ever become fashionable. My partner walked ahead with the dignity of someone who had repeatedly said "are you sure about the bus?" and was now too gracious to mention it again.

The goat appeared at a bend in the road, tethered outside a small stone house with a satellite dish that looked older than I was. An elderly woman emerged almost immediately, as if the goat were a doorbell. She wore a floral apron over what I can only describe as full evening wear, and she assessed us with the frank curiosity of someone who had seen many foolish tourists but still found us entertaining.

"You are lost," she said. Not a question.

I attempted my three words of Croatian, which came out as a noise like a dishwasher finishing its cycle. She laughed, properly, throwing her head back, then switched to German, then English, then something I suspect was her own invention. Within minutes we were sitting on plastic chairs in her courtyard, drinking something clear and suspicious from a Fanta bottle, while her husband appeared from nowhere to examine our broken suitcase wheel with the gravity of a surgeon.

"American?" he asked.

"English."

He nodded slowly, as if this explained the suitcase, the bus, possibly Brexit. He repaired the wheel with wire and a tool that looked medieval, refusing payment, while his wife told us about the villa we had actually booked. "The young man, he is from Split, his grandmother's house. Very clean. No personality." She said this last part with visible satisfaction.

They drove us the final mile in a Volkswagen that smelled of fish and lavender, the goat watching from the gate with what I can only describe as professional detachment. The villa, when we reached it, was indeed very clean, with a pool that caught the afternoon light and a view of the fortress that made me temporarily forget my sunburn.

But I keep thinking about that couple. About her evening wear at noon, his solemn wheel surgery, the way they clearly found us ridiculous and helped us anyway. The Central Dalmatian Riviera is full of this sort of thing, I have since learned. The barman in Klis who explained the local football rivalry with diagrams on a napkin. The woman at the market who sold me figs and a lengthy opinion on my sandals. The old man at the fortress ticket office who asked if I was "running from something" when I mentioned I was staying a fortnight.

I was not running from anything, I told him. He looked at me with the same expression as the goat.

Perhaps I am now. Perhaps that is what holidays do. The villa is lovely, the pool is perfect, the fortress is genuinely spectacular at sunset. But I find myself walking past that stone house with the satellite dish, hoping to be summoned by a goat, to sit on plastic chairs and feel foolish and welcomed in equal measure. The young man from Split keeps the villa spotless. He asks if everything is satisfactory. It is, I tell him. It absolutely is.

But I miss the personality.