I have never been so grateful for a satnav in my life, and I have never wanted to throw one out of a moving vehicle quite so much either. The journey from Pula Airport to our holiday home in Umag Plovanija had been going swimmingly until Istria decided to test my navigational pride. One wrong turn, a road that dwindled into something resembling a goat track, and twenty minutes of increasingly tense marital silence later, we found ourselves outside what I am fairly certain was someone's olive grove. The owner waved cheerfully. I waved back with what I hoped looked like intentional tourism rather than abject failure. The satnav, I noticed, had developed an ominous habit of saying "recalculating" with what felt like genuine disappointment.

We arrived at Umag Plovanija in late September, that golden stretch when Istria sheds its summer crowds but clings to its warmth like a guest who knows the party is ending but is not quite ready to leave. The property sat among vineyards that were heavy with grapes not yet harvested, and the air carried something different from high summer - a ripeness, a slight earthiness, the smell of things preparing to close down for winter. My wife remarked that it smelled like "a fancy candle from John Lewis." She was not wrong.

The pool, still open but no longer surrounded by the constant chatter of July families, had that particular stillness of autumn water. I dipped a toe and found it bracing rather than welcoming, which felt appropriate somehow. This was not the season for languid floating. This was the season for looking at the pool, remembering summer, and deciding that a cup of tea on the terrace was the more sensible option. The terrace itself was where we spent most of that first afternoon, watching the light change over the surrounding countryside in a way that summer simply does not allow - slower, more dramatic, more demanding of attention.

The house felt different than it would have in peak season too. The thick stone walls, presumably a blessing during August heatwaves, now made the interior genuinely cool, almost startlingly so after sitting outside. I found myself reaching for a jumper I had optimistically packed "just in case," smugness entirely unwarranted given my earlier navigational performance. The kitchen, compact but well-equipped, seemed to invite actual cooking rather than the assembly of cold salads and desperate ice cream runs that define my usual holiday catering. There was a proper oven. I stared at it with something approaching suspicion.

That evening, we walked to a nearby konoba, one of those family-run places where the menu depends on what looked good at the market that morning. The truffles were in season, because of course they were - this is Istria in autumn, when the forests surrender their buried treasure and every other dish arrives shaved with something that smells of earth and luxury. I ordered a pasta I could not pronounce and ate it with the particular greed of someone who has spent the afternoon getting lost and then emotionally recovering via terrace-based contemplation.

Walking back in darkness that came earlier than we expected, the crickets still going but somehow less frantic than summer crickets, I felt that particular autumn holiday melancholy - the sense of catching something just before it disappears. The vineyard rows were visible as darker stripes against the darkening sky. Somewhere, I knew, those grapes were being turned into something that someone would drink next year, probably while sitting on the very terrace we had left behind.

The satnav, I should mention, remained unthrown. We even used it the next day, to considerably greater success. Some lessons, it turns out, are seasonal too.