I should have known the sat-nav was up to no good the moment it tried to send us down what looked like a goat track outside Brignoles. There we were, two hours out of Nice, the boot stuffed with overpriced airport sandwiches and a bottle of rose we'd already started eyeing, and suddenly the pleasant hum of the A8 felt like a distant memory. My partner, ever the optimist, insisted it was a shortcut. I insisted it was a lawsuit waiting to happen. The Renault Clio bottomed out twice before I won the argument and we turned back.

The actual approach to Carces was far more civilised, though no less dramatic for my nerves. You come round a bend on the D13 and there it is, this absurdly picturesque village perched on a hillside with its medieval tower poking above the terracotta roofs like something from a film set. I nearly clipped a stone wall gawping at it. Some local on a scooter shot past, clearly unimpressed by my tourist's wonder. Fair enough. He's probably seen plenty of us bumbling through.

Finding the property was another small adventure. The address said one thing, the map said another, and my schoolboy French failed me entirely when I tried to ask directions from a woman walking her dog. I believe I accidentally complimented her eyebrows rather than her knowledge of local rental properties. She looked puzzled but kind, pointed vaguely upward, and we eventually spotted the discreet sign tucked between two lavender bushes that had seen better days. The heat, presumably. Even the plants looked ready for a sit-down.

The key was in a lockbox, which sounds simple until you realise you've been punching in the wrong code for ten minutes because you wrote it down backwards. By this point I was sweating through my shirt, the rose was calling to me from the car, and a small audience of invisible cicadas seemed to be mocking my incompetence from the surrounding pines. When the box finally clicked open, I may have said something unprintable in relief.

Stepping inside was like walking into someone else's very good life. The place was cool despite the afternoon heat, all tiled floors and wooden beams that looked older than my entire family tree. A kitchen that actually wanted you to cook in it, which immediately made me feel guilty about the sad sandwiches still sweating in the boot. French doors led to a terrace with a view down the valley that stopped me mid-step. You could see vineyards stretching out in rows so neat they looked combed, and beyond them the hills fading into that particular blue haze that makes Provence feel slightly unreal.

I stood there with my bag still on my shoulder, aware that I probably looked ridiculous, and felt that peculiar shift that happens sometimes on holiday. The sat-nav fiasco, the eyebrow compliment, the lockbox humiliation - none of it mattered suddenly. There was a pool glittering below the terrace, a fig tree heavy with fruit I had no idea how to use, and somewhere in the village a church bell marking the hour with a sound so perfectly French I half-expected to turn round and find Peter Mayle taking notes.

My partner appeared with two glasses of the rose, warm now but entirely welcome. We clinked them against the railing and watched a hawk circle lazily above the vineyards. I thought about all the careful planning, the anxious checking of reviews, the spreadsheet of activities I'd made back in rainy England. None of it had prepared me for the simple, slightly chaotic pleasure of just being here, in this moment, with warm wine and a view that demanded nothing from me whatsoever.

The sandwiches stayed in the boot until morning. We found a boulangerie in the village square instead, and ate croissants on that same terrace watching the mist lift from the valley. But that's another story, and honestly, the arrival was quite enough excitement for one day.