I have never been so grateful to see a gravel driveway in all my life. Six hours after leaving Gatwick, two wrong turns near Montpellier, and one spectacular argument with a sat nav that insisted our "Carnas" was somewhere in the middle of a vineyard, we finally crunched to a halt outside a low stone building with green shutters and a slightly wonky terrace. I stepped out of the car, stretched my legs, and promptly walked straight into a clothesline I had failed to spot. Full whack to the forehead. My partner laughed so hard he dropped the baguette we had bought for lunch, which then rolled under the car and emerged looking like it had been through a rock tumbler. Welcome to the Languedoc, I thought, rubbing my head and eating dusty bread on a sun-warmed wall.

The Carnas itself turned out to be the sort of place that undoes you slowly, in the best possible way. The owners had left the key under a terracotta pot that I am fairly certain had not been moved since the mid-nineties. Inside, the air smelled of dried lavender and old wood, and every floorboard announced your presence with a theatrical creak. I loved it immediately. The kitchen had a proper gas hob, slightly alarming wiring, and a fridge that hummed like a contented grandfather. We dumped our cases in the bedroom with the sloped ceiling, opened every window, and promptly did absolutely nothing for the rest of the afternoon.

That first evening set the tone for the entire week. We sat in the garden with a bottle of local rose, watching the light change over the hills, and I realised I had forgotten what my own breathing sounded like when it was not rushed. The garden was not manicured or fussy. It was simply there, doing its thing, full of lavender and rosemary and some plant I still cannot identify that attracted bees the size of small aircraft. I spent a good hour on that first day just watching a lizard sun itself on the terrace wall. I named him Gerald. He did not seem to mind.

The days that followed blurred into a rhythm so gentle it barely qualified as a rhythm at all. I read three books in seven days, which for me is practically a personal record. I read in the garden hammock until my arms got tired, then I moved to a deckchair until my neck got stiff, then I lay on a blanket on the grass until an ant crawled on me and I had to relocate again. It was the most purposeful purposelessness I have ever achieved. My partner took to bringing me coffee without being asked, which I took as both a loving gesture and a quiet commentary on how little I was moving.

We did venture out occasionally, though never far. The village shop for more bread, a morning market in a nearby town for tomatoes that actually tasted of something, an evening stroll to work out whether Gerald was still about. But always we came back to the Carnas, to the garden, to the slow hours between lunch and dinner when the heat pressed down and the only sensible response was to do even less than before.

On our final morning, I found myself standing at the kitchen window with a cup of tea, watching the mist lift from the hills, and I felt something shift in me. I am not someone who relaxes easily. I am usually planning the next thing, worrying about the thing after that. But somewhere between the clothesline incident and my fourth consecutive hour with a novel and a bowl of cherries, I had accidentally become the sort of person who just stands at windows. It felt like a small miracle, honestly.

We left the key back under its pot, drove away with the sat nav already arguing, and I spent the first hour of the journey home planning when we might return to do absolutely nothing all over again.