The sat-nav had been cheerfully insisting we were "arriving at destination" for a good ten minutes before we actually found the turning for Le Tholonet, by which point my other half had developed that particular set to the jaw that suggests someone is mentally composing a strongly worded letter to a technology company. We had already done one complete circuit of a vineyard, waved at a confused-looking goat, and very nearly introduced our hire car to a dry stone wall. Provence in late September, we were learning, does not believe in conspicuous signage.

We finally spotted the stone pillars just as the afternoon light was beginning to soften into that particular honeyed quality that makes everything look like a film set. The journey down from Marseille had been straightforward enough until the last few miles, when the roads narrowed and the lavender fields gave way to proper working countryside. I had insisted on driving, naturally, being the one who had booked the place and therefore the one who felt some ceremonial ownership of the arrival. This pride lasted exactly until I misjudged the width of the entrance and scraped the wheel arch on a lavender bush that had apparently been waiting for just such an amateur. My other half said nothing. The silence was eloquent.

September in Provence is that delicious in-between time when the summer crowds have largely melted away but the weather has not yet got the memo about autumn. The air still carried warmth, but with an edge to it, a reminder that the mistral winds would not stay patient forever. This seasonal limbo defined everything about those first hours. The cicadas were still going, though with noticeably less enthusiasm than they would have managed in July. The light lasted long enough for a proper explore but faded with a suddenness that felt almost continental in its decisiveness.

The property itself sat low against the landscape, that characteristic Provencal architecture that seems to grow from the soil rather than sit upon it. The stone had gone the colour of old parchment in the late sun, and the shutters, a faded blue-green, were properly weathered rather than self-consciously rustic. I noticed all this while pretending very hard that the lavender bush incident had not happened. There was a small terrace with a table that looked like it had witnessed decades of long lunches, and beyond it the garden sloped away into olive trees that were heavy with fruit not quite ready for harvest. That was September too, I thought. Everything in waiting.

We dumped our bags with the particular abandon of people who have been in a car too long and immediately opened all the windows. The interior smelled of stone and old wood and something faintly herby, perhaps the last of the dried lavender from earlier in the season. It was cooler inside than out, which I had not expected, the thick walls doing their ancient work. I kept catching myself standing in doorways rather than properly entering rooms, half in and half out, as if the season had made me indecisive about whether I wanted shelter or open air.

The kitchen faced east, which meant it caught the morning light, and someone had left a bowl of late figs on the counter. They were soft to the point of urgency, that particular September abundance that demands immediate attention. We ate them standing up, juice on our chins, looking out at the garden as the evening settled in. The olive trees were silvering in the fading light, and I could smell woodsmoke from somewhere distant, someone else preparing for the cooler nights that were coming.

I had packed for summer, mostly, with one cardigan added almost as an afterthought. That cardigan saw more action than anything else in my suitcase. The days still warmed up, sometimes surprisingly so, but the evenings came with a chill that felt personal, intimate, the countryside gently reminding you that you were not in the south of anywhere anymore but in a place with proper seasons and no obligation to perform perpetual sunshine for tourists.

By the time we poured our first glasses of local rose, that particular pale salmon colour that seems to exist only in Provence, the sky had gone the colour of a bruised peach. The cicadas had finally given up. Somewhere an owl started up, early for the night, perhaps confused by the seasonal transition as well. We sat on those weathered chairs and did not say much, tired from the journey, full of figs, aware that we had arrived at exactly the right moment and exactly the right time of year, even if the getting there had involved a goat and some property damage to shrubbery.

The mistral would come later in the week, we were told, proper autumn making its entrance. But for now, this was enough. This in-between, this waiting, this particular quality of light that would not last and knew it.