I have never been particularly gifted with directions, which is why my decision to navigate our way to a rural property in Continental Croatia using nothing but optimism and a phone with 12% battery was, in hindsight, not my finest hour. My partner, who had suggested printing the directions three days earlier, sat in the passenger seat with that particular expression of British restraint that somehow conveys both disappointment and mild triumph simultaneously.

The journey from Zagreb had started well enough. The motorway gave way to winding roads, then narrower roads, then what I can only describe as a suggestion of a road between fields of sunflowers and maize that stretched on like a promise of peace we were not yet allowed to keep. The mishap, when it came, was spectacularly mundane. I missed the turning, reversed into what I believed to be a farm track, and promptly grounded the hire car on a ridge of gravel that had clearly been placed there by someone with a grudge against overconfident tourists. There we sat, wheels spinning, surrounded by nothing but cornfields and the distant sound of a dog who had spotted an opportunity for entertainment.

Twenty minutes, one helpful farmer with a tractor, and a considerable amount of Croatian hand-gesturing later, we found the actual entrance to our holiday home near Konjscina. I had prepared a little speech about the beauty of the countryside and the charm of getting slightly lost, but my partner was already unpacking the shopping from the boot with the focused energy of someone who has decided to process their emotions through practical activity.

The property revealed itself gradually, as rural places do. A stone house with that particular red-tiled roof you see throughout this part of Croatia, weathered in a way that suggests it has witnessed many arrivals more graceful than ours. The garden was larger than I had understood from the photographs, with mature fruit trees and a terrace that caught the afternoon light in a manner that immediately made me feel slightly less foolish about the gravel incident. A fig tree near the entrance was dropping ripe fruit onto the path with what I can only describe as casual abundance.

Inside, the rooms were cool and smelled of wood polish and something faintly herbal, perhaps lavender stored somewhere I could not locate. The kitchen had the reassuring solidity of a space that has actually been cooked in, not merely styled for photographs. I found myself touching the wooden table top, noting the marks of previous visitors' meals, and feeling unexpectedly moved by this evidence of ordinary human pleasure in a place I had reached so inelegantly.

My partner appeared at the doorway with two cups of tea, because some rituals persist regardless of latitude or minor automotive embarrassment. We stood in silence for a moment, looking out at the garden, at the hills beyond, at the swallows tracing patterns against a sky that seemed to contain more blue than I had previously thought possible. The farmer's dog had apparently followed us, or perhaps this was a different dog entirely, and now lay in the shade of the terrace with the settled air of a creature who had correctly identified us as harmless but amusing.

I thought about how often I approach holidays with an anxious need for perfection, for seamless transitions and Instagram-worthy moments, and how this arrival had offered none of that. Yet standing there, tea cooling in my hands, gravel still lodged somewhere beneath the car, I felt something loosen in my chest. The countryside of Continental Croatia does not hurry. The maize grows at its own pace. The figs fall when they are ready. Perhaps, I thought, I could learn something from this.

The evening brought a simple meal of local cheese and bread, eaten on that sun-warmed terrace as the light turned golden and then rose-coloured across the fields. We could hear church bells from Konjscina, perhaps, or from some village even smaller, carrying across the distances with a clarity that suggested the air itself was different here, thinner and more generous with its acoustics.

I will not claim that the gravel incident became funny immediately. Some humiliations require a period of maturation, like cheese or grudges. But as darkness gathered and the first stars appeared with a brightness that startled me after years of city living, I felt the first stirrings of amusement. We had arrived chaotic, dusty, slightly defeated by infrastructure, and yet here we were, in a stone house surrounded by fruit trees and fireflies, with a week of nothing particular stretching ahead of us like a gift we had not expected to receive.

The dog, I should mention, had claimed the garden chair nearest the kitchen door and showed no intention of relinquishing it.