I have never been so grateful for a sat nav with a sense of humour as I was driving to our Krnica Rakalj villa this past May. There we were, my partner and I, winding through Istria's spring-green countryside, when our trusty device decided the most direct route involved what I can only describe as a goat track masquerading as a road. The olive groves were beautiful, admittedly, but the scrape our hire car collected from an overenthusiastic branch was less so. I laughed. My partner did not. Not until later, anyway, when we opened our first bottle of local Malvazija and the scratch became a "character mark."

May in Istria is something of a secret. The summer crowds have not yet descended, and the landscape feels like it is stretching after a long winter sleep. Arriving at the villa, perched between Krnica and Rakalj on the eastern coast, I was struck by how the season had shaped everything. The pool was not yet heated to summer perfection, but the midday sun made it entirely bearable, even bracing in that way that makes you feel properly alive. Wildflowers crowded the verges, purple and yellow splashes against the red Istrian soil. Our terrace overlooked a sea that shifted between grey-green and sudden, startling blue as clouds passed overhead.

The villa itself was clearly built with seasonal living in mind. Thick stone walls that would keep heat at bay in August felt reassuringly solid against the still-fresh spring evenings. We ate breakfast outside in short sleeves, watching swallows dart above the garden, but by six o'clock we were reaching for jumpers and lighting the outdoor fire pit. There is something delicious about that transitional time of year, the need to adapt rather than settling into one lazy rhythm.

I had worried that May might feel like a compromise, too early for the full beach holiday experience. How wrong I was. The local konoba we walked to, barely ten minutes through lanes still soft from recent rain, was serving wild asparagus with eggs, a spring delicacy we would have missed entirely in July. The owner, a chap called Davor, explained that the season dictated everything here. "In summer," he said, gesturing at his nearly empty terrace, "you cannot find a table. Now, I have time to talk, to cook properly." His wine was young, from the previous autumn, still sharp and evolving. I found myself wondering what it would taste like in another year, another season.

The mornings were misty, sometimes spectacularly so, with the coastline disappearing entirely until ten or eleven. We learned not to plan early excursions, instead lingering over coffee as the garden slowly revealed itself. By afternoon, the warmth was genuine, persuasive, drawing us to rocky coves we had entirely to ourselves. The water was cold, no question, but the kind of cold that makes your skin sing afterwards, wrapped in a towel on sun-warmed stone.

One evening, watching a storm roll in from the sea, I felt that gentle self-reflection creep up on me. I am usually a peak-season person, greedy for guaranteed sunshine, for the holiday I have paid for and expect. This spring timing had been accidental, a work scheduling quirk. Yet here I was, experiencing a place more intimately than I ever had in high summer, accepting its moods, its variable weather, its offerings that would not exist in another month. The storm passed. The air afterwards was washed clean, scented with pine and salt and something herbal I could not name.

We left just as the first serious heat was building, the car park at Pula airport already busier than our arrival. I looked back at the scratch on our bumper and smiled. Like the season itself, it was imperfect, unexpected, and entirely memorable.