The sat nav had been threatening to quit on us since Rijeka, so when it finally packed in somewhere between Pula and Premantura, I can't say I was surprised. What did surprise me was my own brilliant decision to rely on it entirely, having not bothered to jot down the actual address of our holiday let. "It's fine," I'd told my partner, waving my phone about with the confidence of someone who'd never heard of roaming charges. "Technology, isn't it marvellous?"

Forty minutes of bumbling down increasingly narrow Istrian lanes later, technology had well and truly had the last laugh. We found ourselves at what I can only describe as a goat's front garden, complete with an actual goat who looked at us with the weary disappointment of someone who'd seen this all before. My partner, who had been maintaining a heroic silence, finally spoke. "Shall I ask the goat for directions, or do you want to?"

We eventually found the place by the old-fashioned method of driving until we spotted a NOVASOL sign poking above a hedge. The property sat at the end of a rough track, surrounded by scrubby maquis and the occasional olive tree doing its best in the stony soil. A perfectly ordinary Croatian holiday home, in other words, and an absolute sight for sore eyes.

The key was in the lockbox as promised, though getting it out required the dexterity of a safecracker and the patience of a saint. I possessed neither, particularly after three hours in a hire car with dodgy air conditioning. My partner, who does possess both, eventually prised it free while I made a show of inspecting the terrace furniture. The table wobbled. I chose not to mention this.

Inside, the place had that particular smell of holiday lets everywhere: clean but slightly unused, like a museum of other people's summers. The kitchen was compact, the sort where you become intimately acquainted with anyone else attempting to make tea simultaneously. I immediately banged my head on a low cupboard while reaching for a glass, which felt like the proper initiation ritual.

The terrace, though. That redeemed everything. Not large, but positioned just so to catch the evening breeze coming off the Adriatic. You couldn't see the sea from ours - the maquis saw to that - but you could sense it, that particular quality of coastal air that makes shoulders drop without permission. I sat on the wobbly table's accompanying chair, which turned out to be perfectly stable, and felt the particular foolishness of the journey already softening into anecdote.

My partner emerged with two glasses of the terrible airport wine we'd bought, because apparently we were the sort of people who panic-bought wine at baggage claim. We sat there as the light went golden, listening to the cicadas crank up their evening racket, and I offered my official apology for the sat nav debacle. Accepted with grace, or perhaps exhaustion.

The goat, I suspect, is still telling stories about us.