I have never been one to trust a sat nav unconditionally, and yet there I was, somewhere between Nimes and nowhere, watching ours serenely instruct us to turn onto what was clearly a farmer's track. My partner, ever the optimist, suggested we "give it a go." Reader, we gave it a go. Twenty minutes, one deeply questionable ford crossing, and a very awkward reverse past a herd of unimpressed goats later, we arrived at our Caveirac holiday home with slightly more adventure than anticipated and a rental car that would never quite smell the same.

The property sat just outside the village itself, a solid stone affair with shutters that had clearly seen several decades of Mediterranean sun. I fell in love with it immediately, mostly because it featured what I can only describe as the most aggressively French kitchen I have ever encountered. Copper pans hung from hooks like culinary weaponry. There was a proper range cooker that looked as though it had been installed during the Third Republic. The previous occupants had left behind a jar of herbes de Provence that had fused into something approaching a geological formation. I opened it, sniffed, and decided this was exactly the kind of authentic local experience I had craved.

Our first evening demanded a trip to the Caveirac market, which operates on Wednesday mornings and Saturday afternoons with the kind of relaxed punctuality that makes British market traders seem almost frantic by comparison. I had grand plans. I would buy fresh vegetables, local cheese, perhaps some of that Languedoc wine everyone raves about. I would return and produce something magnificent on that ancient range. What actually happened was that I became completely overwhelmed by a cheese vendor who insisted I sample approximately fourteen varieties of goat's cheese, each one explained at length while a queue of very patient locals formed behind me. I bought four. I cannot tell you what any of them were called. One smelled distinctly of barnyard and ambition.

The village itself, once we found it via the actual road, turned out to be the sort of place where lunch is not a meal but a philosophical commitment. We discovered a small restaurant near the church, nothing fancy, just a terrace and a menu written on a chalkboard that someone had last updated with genuine enthusiasm. I ordered the cassoulet because when in Languedoc, one must, and spent the next three hours in a state of pleasant incapacitation. The beans alone could have qualified as a minor religious experience. My partner had something involving duck that arrived in a portion size I can only describe as "agricultural." We drank a local Picpoul de Pinet, which I had previously assumed was something you took for an upset stomach, and felt extremely pleased with our life choices.

That evening, determined to cook properly, I attempted to recreate something of what we had eaten. The range cooker, I discovered, runs approximately one setting below "surface of the sun" and one above "tepid." There is no in-between. My attempt at a simple ratatouille became something more closely resembling a vegetable confit, and then, after I became distracted by a second bottle of wine, a vegetable carbon. We ate it anyway, on the terrace, watching the light fade over the garrigue. It was, in its way, perfect.

The local Cave cooperative became something of a daily pilgrimage. I am not proud of how quickly the woman behind the counter began to recognise us, though I am perhaps a little proud that she eventually stopped asking if we wanted to taste before buying. We developed a routine: morning coffee at the house, a wander to the bakery for bread that actually tasted of something, then a slow progression through the day's culinary possibilities. The butcher in nearby Nimes, which I mention only because we did venture there once for something specific, provided sausages that I still think about with something approaching longing.

By our fourth day, I had abandoned any pretence of sophisticated cooking and simply bought whatever looked good at market, took it home, and applied heat with varying degrees of success. One memorable evening involved local mussels, a quantity of garlic that would alarm a cardiologist, and a bottle of white wine that never made it to the table because we finished it during preparation. The resulting dish was magnificent. I could not recreate it if you paid me. Something about the light, perhaps, or the fifth glass.

The village pub, such as it is, turned out to be less a pub and more a bar-tabac where old men gather to discuss things I could not quite follow but found deeply comforting nonetheless. We became regular enough that our usual aperitif, a pastis for me and a kir for my partner, would appear before we had fully settled onto our stools. I tried to engage one gentleman in conversation about rugby, which I understand is compulsory in this part of France, and received in return a twenty-minute monologue that I believe was largely about the 1995 World Cup but cannot swear to. I nodded along. He seemed satisfied.

What struck me, and what I keep returning to when people ask about the holiday, was how completely the days became about food and its preparation. Not in any ambitious, Instagram-worthy way, but in the slow, inevitable manner of a place where eating is simply what you do between waking and sleeping. We bought peaches from a roadside stall that had clearly been there since before road safety regulations were invented. We ate them over the sink, juice running down our wrists, and declared them the best peaches in human history. We were probably right.

On our final morning, I attempted one last market trip, one last grand cooking gesture. I bought too much, as always. I made something with courgettes and tomatoes and the last of that fateful herbes de Provence. It was fine. It was more than fine, actually, eaten on that terrace with the shutters thrown open and the cicadas going about their eternal business. We packed with the kind of reluctance that only comes from a holiday that has actually worked, that has delivered something you did not know you needed.

The drive back to the airport was uneventful, sat nav behaving itself, no goats involved. We stopped for one last brasserie lunch somewhere near Montpellier, and I found myself already talking about when we might return, what we might cook, which cheese vendor I might actually identify by name. My partner smiled in that particular way that suggests both tolerance and shared understanding. Some holidays change you. This one mostly changed my waistline and my expectations of what a simple kitchen in a stone house can produce, given enough local wine and absolutely no pressure to perform.

I still have that jar of herbes de Provence, fused solid, sitting on my kitchen shelf. I cannot bring myself to throw it out.