I have never been so relieved to see a man in flip-flops holding a litre of olive oil as I was when we finally found our Trogir Vinisce holiday let. The sat nav had given up somewhere near Seget Vranjica, my partner Dave had been navigating using a screenshot of Google Maps, and I had just reversed our hire car into a stone wall that turned out to be someone's garden feature. The olive oil man, who introduced himself as Branko, simply nodded, said "English?" in a tone that suggested this happened every Tuesday, and pointed up a steep lane that looked more like a goat path with aspirations.

The property itself sat perched above Vinisce bay like it had been there since before anyone thought to call it a holiday home. Whitewashed walls, terracotta roof, the sort of place that makes you feel instantly underdressed in your airport-stained joggers. Branko, it emerged, lived in the neighbouring house and had appointed himself unofficial welcome committee for the entire village. Within five minutes of unloading our bags, he had produced two glasses of rakija that could have stripped paint, informed us his cousin owned the best konoba in Trogir, and confessed that his wife thought he talked too much to tourists. "She is right," he said, with the satisfaction of a man who had no intention of changing.

Our actual host, a woman named Marija who managed the property, arrived the next morning with fresh figs and the resigned expression of someone who had dealt with many Daves before. She walked us through the house with brisk efficiency, pausing only to confiscate a towel Dave had mistaken for a bath mat. "This is for beach," she said firmly. "You have legs. Use them." I liked her immediately. She told us the water heater had moods, the WiFi was "sometimes yes, sometimes no," and that if we wanted fish for dinner, we should find Ante at the small harbour before seven, because Ante believed anyone buying fish after seven was planning something suspicious.

We found Ante the following morning, a wiry man in a faded Croatia football shirt who sold his catch from plastic crates on the harbour wall. He spoke approximately twelve words of English but deployed them with surgical precision. "You," he said, pointing at Dave. "You cook?" Dave admitted he did not. Ante shook his head slowly, the way one might at a disappointing nephew, and selected three sea bream with the air of a man taking charge of a bad situation. "I clean. You watch. You learn." We watched. We did not learn. But we ate magnificently that evening on our terrace, Branko having materialised with a bottle of his own wine and strong opinions on how long to grill fish.

The woman who ran the tiny shop in Vinisce centre, I never did catch her name, operated with the selective availability of a village institution. She opened when she opened, stocked what she stocked, and regarded our attempts to buy milk with the scepticism of someone who had seen too many British stomachs come to grief on local cheese. "You want yoghurt," she decided, handing it over unrequested. "Better for you. Trust."

By our fourth day, the rhythm of small encounters had become the holiday itself. The morning coffee on the terrace watching Branko argue with his tomatoes. The afternoon swim where Marija's husband, a silent man called Dusan, would appear from nowhere to wordlessly adjust our sun umbrella to a more correct angle. The evening procession to the harbour where Ante would critique our fish-buying progress with the stern encouragement of a disappointed teacher.

I had arrived expecting turquoise water and stone villages, both of which we certainly got. What I had not expected was to feel so thoroughly, comically, warmly managed by a cast of characters who seemed to view our holiday as a joint project requiring their collective intervention. Dave observed one evening, three rakijas deep with Branko, that we had done remarkably little actual sightseeing. I thought about this. We had not made it to Trogir's old town, had skipped the advertised boat trips, had barely ventured beyond our little bay and its immediate custodians.

And yet I could not remember a holiday where I had felt less like a tourist, more like a very inept temporary resident being gently shepherded through the basics by people with infinite patience and absolutely no filter. Marija had been right about the water heater's moods. Dusan's umbrella angles were objectively superior to ours. Ante's fish had been flawless. Even the yoghurt woman, I grudgingly admitted, had a point about our digestive limitations.

On our final morning, Branko produced a parting bottle of olive oil, the same litre he had been holding when we arrived. "From my trees," he said. "Not for cooking. For remembering." I have it still, sitting on my kitchen shelf, slightly too precious to actually use. Every time I look at it, I remember reversing into a wall, being told I had legs and should use them, and a week of being thoroughly, absurdly, wonderfully looked after by people who had no reason to care whether our holiday succeeded, but absolutely insisted that it would.