Getting to our little place in Prunete was meant to be straightforward, or so I told myself. We had flown into Bastia, collected a hire car that smelled faintly of pine air freshener and regret, and set off down the coast with what I confidently declared was "a brilliant sense of direction." Forty minutes later, we were in a supermarket car park in an entirely wrong village, me insisting the sat nav had "a funny idea of shortcuts" while my other half sat in stony silence clutching a bag of emergency madeleines. Turns out I had typed "Prunete" into Google Maps but somehow selected a bakery in Bastia instead of our actual destination. We ate the madeleines in the car before admitting defeat and starting over.

The proper Prunete, when we finally found it, sits on Corsica's eastern coast in that glorious stretch between Bastia and Porto-Vecchio, all maquis-scented hills tumbling down to the Tyrrhenian Sea. Our stone cottage had a terrace that caught the morning sun and a kitchen that looked like someone had loved it properly - copper pans hanging from hooks, a proper gas hob with the temperament of a thoroughbred racehorse, and a fridge that hummed contentedly in the corner. I stood in the doorway with our bags still in the car and thought, right, we are going to eat magnificently here.

The first evening, determined to cook something authentically Corsican, I marched down to the little alimentation generale in the village itself. The woman behind the counter watched me with the patient expression of someone who has seen many British holidaymakers make ambitious declarations. I came away with brocciu cheese, some figatellu sausage that smelled powerfully of wild fennel and woodsmoke, and a bottle of Patrimonio rouge that the shopkeeper selected with a small approving nod. Back at the cottage, I attempted mybrocciu omelette. The brocciu, being fresh and delicate, turned to something resembling cottage cheese scrambled eggs. My other half ate it bravely. I opened the Patrimonio early.

Breakfast became our favourite ritual. There was a bakery in a nearby hamlet, the sort where you queue behind locals who all seem to know each other and discuss the weather with the seriousness of UN negotiators. We would fetch still-warm ficelle bread, proper croissants with that shattering exterior, and little canistrelli biscuits that I developed an alarming dependency upon. Back on our terrace with coffee from the moka pot, watching the morning haze lift off the sea, I felt genuinely sorry for people eating cereal at home.

The local market in Moriani-Plage, held on Sunday mornings, became our weekly pilgrimage. I use "pilgrimage" deliberately because we approached it with religious devotion. The charcutier there sold coppa and lonzu that he sliced with theatrical precision, each sample offered with a flourish. I bought far too much, always, convincing myself we would preserve it properly. We never did. We ate it standing in the kitchen with our fingers, pairing it with local honey that tasted of the maquis itself - heather and myrtle and something I could never quite identify.

I attempted to recreate a proper Corsican soup one rainy afternoon, the kind with wild herbs and white beans that I had eaten at a tiny restaurant down near the beach. Mine tasted of determination and regret. The wild herbs I had gathered from a hillside walk turned out to include something slightly bitter that dominated everything. We ended up at the restaurant instead, where the owner laughed knowingly when I explained my culinary disaster and brought us an extra glass of muscat without charging.

The restaurant itself, barely more than a handful of tables with plastic chairs and a view of fishing boats, served the simplest grilled fish I have ever tasted. Just fish, olive oil, lemon, and whatever magic they performed over charcoal. I asked the waiter about the technique and he shrugged in that particularly Gallic way that suggests some things are not meant to be explained. We went back three times. The second visit, he remembered us and recommended the aziminu, a Corsican fish soup that made my attempt look like dishwater. The third visit, he did not even bring menus.

Evenings often found us on our terrace with the remains of lunch - bread, cheese, perhaps some of that charcuterie if any survived - and bottles of Vermentino chilled in the fridge that hummed its contented song. I attempted to make fiadone, the Corsican cheesecake, using a recipe I found in a battered cookbook in the cottage. It collapsed in the middle like a failed souffle but tasted divine, all lemon and brocciu and my stubborn pride. We ate it with spoons directly from the dish, watching the sun drop behind the hills and the first bats emerge.

The pub in the next village along, if you can call it that - more a bar-tabac with aspirations - served cheap beer and occasional sandwiches of jambon-beurre made with bread that deserved better treatment. We went for the beer, stayed for the characters. Old men played cards with ferocious concentration, occasionally shouting what I assumed were accusations of cheating. The barman poured pastis with a heavy hand and tolerated my attempts at conversation with amused patience. One evening, after perhaps one pastis too many, I announced my intention to fish for our dinner the following day. The barman looked at me, looked at my soft hands, and poured me another without comment.

I did not fish. I went to the market instead and bought fish from someone who actually knew what they were doing. Some holiday lessons are learned gently, over time, with good food and better wine.