I have never been so grateful for a sat nav in my entire life, and I have never wanted to throw one out of a moving vehicle quite so much either. The journey from Zadar Airport to Pridraga had been going swimmingly until I decided I knew better than the robotic voice telling me to take the next left. "That cannot be right," I muttered to myself, spotting what looked like a goat track leading up a hillside. "She is having a laugh." Ten minutes later, I was reversing past an elderly gentleman who was watching me with the amused patience of someone who had seen this exact scene approximately four thousand times before. He waved me back toward the main road without a word, just a slow shake of his head and a grin that suggested he would be dining out on this story for a fortnight.

When I finally rolled up to the property, a woman called Marija was waiting by the gate with keys in one hand and what I later learned was homemade grappa in the other. "You took the scenic route," she said, which I have since decided is the Dalmatian way of calling someone a complete idiot without causing offence. She showed me round the place with the practised efficiency of someone who had done this hundreds of times but somehow still managed to make it feel personal. The pool gleamed in that particular Adriatic sunlight that makes everything look slightly too perfect, like a filtered photograph you suspect has been tampered with.

I had barely unpacked when I heard a voice from the neighbouring terrace. "You are the one who got lost!" It was not a question. Toni, a retired fisherman who had lived in Pridraga his entire sixty-odd years, had apparently already received a full report from the goat track gentleman, whose name turned out to be Stipe and whose grapevines I had very nearly demolished. Toni spoke English with the confidence of someone who had learned it primarily from American films and British tourists, resulting in a magnificent hybrid that involved calling everyone "mate" in a thick Croatian accent. He insisted I join him for a beer that evening, and I am still not entirely sure whether I agreed or simply failed to find a polite escape route.

The beer turned into three, then into dinner with his wife Dragica, who pretended to be annoyed about the impromptu guest but had clearly prepared enough food for a small army just in case. She spoke almost no English but communicated entire novels through eyebrow movements and the occasional pointed gesture at her husband. When Toni told me, with great solemnity, that he had once caught a fish "bigger than your car," Dragica's expression suggested the fish in question might have been marginally larger than a sardine. Their bickering was so clearly affectionate that I found myself missing my own grandparents with an unexpected sharpness, sitting there on their terrace with the smell of grilled fish and the sound of crickets.

The next morning I encountered Stipe properly, by which I mean I nearly backed into his grapevines again while trying to turn round in a space that was definitely not designed for turning. He was leaning on a fence, watching with the same patient amusement. "You need practice," he said, in roughly those words though with considerably more gesture. He then spent twenty minutes teaching me the correct technique for reversing on narrow Croatian roads, which apparently involves a lot of hand signals and absolutely no reliance on mirrors whatsoever. His grapes, he informed me, were the finest in the region, and he made me taste one there and then to prove it. It was excellent, though I suspect my opinion was not actually required.

By day three I had become something of a local curiosity. The woman at the small shop where I bought my morning bread started greeting me with "Ah, the lost Englishman!" and seemed genuinely disappointed when I managed the journey without incident. A man called Goran, who ran a tiny konoba down the road, heard about my navigational failures and insisted on drawing me a map so detailed it included individual trees he considered significant landmarks. "This olive," he said, pointing at a smudge on the paper, "is three hundred years old. Do not hit it." I promised solemnly, though I suspect nobody truly believed me.

What struck me most was how quickly these strangers had folded me into their routines and their stories. Marija checked on me daily with the casual thoroughness of a favourite aunt, bringing tomatoes from her garden and gossip about which neighbour had recently acquired a problematic new dog. Toni and I developed a ritual of evening beers during which he would tell increasingly improbable fishing stories while Dragica provided silent but devastating commentary from the kitchen window. Even Stipe softened slightly, though he never entirely lost the expression of a man who knew I remained a vehicular menace.

I came to Pridraga expecting a quiet week by a pool, and I got that, certainly. But I also got something I had not anticipated: the particular warmth of people who have no particular reason to be kind to you but choose to be anyway. There is something humbling about being the incompetent foreigner who cannot reverse properly, who gets lost on roads that children probably navigate on bicycles, and finding that incompetence met not with irritation but with amusement and then with genuine welcome.

On my final evening, Toni produced a bottle of his own wine, which he claimed was terrible but which tasted perfectly fine to my uneducated palate. Dragica produced another feast. Even Stipe wandered over, apparently having decided that anyone who had managed five days without destroying his vineyard deserved a proper farewell. We sat there as the light faded over the hills and the crickets started up their evening chorus, and I realised that my favourite memory of this holiday would not be any particular view or meal or moment of relaxation by that too-perfect pool. It would be this: sitting with people who had started as strangers, feeling briefly and genuinely like I belonged somewhere I had no right to belong at all.

Marija drove past the next morning as I was loading the car, tooted her horn, and shouted something I did not quite catch but which was definitely affectionate. I took the main road to the airport, following Goran's map with religious precision, and I did not get lost once. I am not sure whether to be proud of this or slightly disappointed.