I have never been so relieved to see a gravel driveway in all my life. After six hours that began with a 4am alarm, a dash to Gatwick, and a hire car with a sat nav that clearly fancied itself as a rally navigator, we finally crunched up to Les Taillades somewhere past four in the afternoon. The mishap? Oh, that came earlier, somewhere between Aix and nowhere, when I confidently declared I could navigate us via the scenic route. Forty minutes of increasingly narrow lanes, one angry-looking farmer, and a minor incident involving a low stone wall and my passenger-side wing mirror later, we admitted defeat and let the sat nav bully us back to civilisation. I spent the rest of the drive in dignified silence, occasionally stroking the damaged mirror as if this might heal it.

But then we arrived, and suddenly none of it mattered. Les Taillades sits just outside the village of the same name, tucked into that golden Provencal landscape of vineyards and stubby oak trees and light that makes everything look slightly unreal, like someone has turned up the saturation just a touch too far. The house itself is one of those solid stone affairs that seems to have grown out of the hillside rather than been built upon it. Terracotta roof, pale shutters, that particular dusty pink-grey of old limestone. It looked at us with the patient expression of a place that has seen many flustered arrivals and will see many more.

The key was in the lockbox, which I fumbled with for an embarrassingly long time, my hands still vibrating from the drive. Inside, the cool struck me first - those thick stone walls doing their ancient work - then the smell of lavender from somewhere, and wood polish, and the faint, not unpleasant mustiness of a house that spends most of its year waiting. The kitchen had terracotta tiles and a proper range cooker that I immediately knew I would not be using to anything like its full potential. A bowl of lemons sat on the counter, presumably from the garden, though I chose to believe they had been placed there by some benevolent Provencal spirit who understood exactly what I needed.

I dumped our bags with the enthusiasm of the truly exhausted and stumbled out to the garden. This, I realised, was where I would be spending my time. A decent-sized pool, yes, but more importantly, shaded terraces with wrought-iron furniture that looked like it had been there since the fifties, olive trees in terracotta pots, and everywhere that silvery-green planting that makes Provencal gardens look so effortlessly composed. A hammock strung between two trees completed the picture. I lowered myself into it with the grace of a collapsing deckchair and stayed there until the light began to soften.

That first evening, we walked barely two hundred metres to the edge of the property and watched the sun go down over the Luberon hills, drinking a supermarket wine that tasted better than anything I have paid thirty pounds for in London. I thought about the wing mirror, the angry farmer, my own ridiculous confidence in my navigational abilities. I laughed, properly, for the first time in weeks. The mirror would get fixed. The farmer had probably forgotten us instantly. What remained was this: stone walls, warm air, the distant sound of cicadas, and absolutely nowhere I needed to be.

I have done very little since. It has been magnificent.