I had convinced myself that driving a left-hand-drive hire car through Marseille airport's spaghetti junction would be the most stressful part of our journey to Maussane-les-Alpilles. I was wrong. The true humiliation came three hours later, when I confidently reversed our Renault into what I thought was the driveway of our holiday cottage, only to discover I had mounted the kerb of the village boulangerie and was now blocking access to a very patient man desperate for his daily baguette. My partner sat in silence. The baker waved me on with the weary tolerance of someone who had seen this exact scene performed by British tourists approximately four thousand times before.

The proper entrance, it turned out, was twenty metres further down, concealed behind a modest wooden gate that opened onto a narrow gravel path. I inched forward, still burning with the particular shame of the geographically incompetent, and then the garden revealed itself. An ancient stone farmhouse, weathered to the colour of pale honey, with a terrace that looked directly onto the Alpilles mountains. The air smelled of thyme and hot earth and something else I could not identify but immediately wanted to bottle. The baker, I decided, could wait. I had arrived in the place I would spend the next week attempting to cook like a local and mostly failing.

Our first morning began with a pilgrimage. Not to a church, but to the Maussane market, which sets up twice weekly in the village square with the unhurried confidence of somewhere that has been selling the same excellent things for centuries. I bought olives from a woman who looked at my selection with visible disappointment, a wheel of Banon cheese wrapped in chestnut leaves, tomatoes that actually smelled of tomatoes, and a bunch of herbs that I later identified as herbes de Provence by comparing them to a photograph on my phone. The stallholder watched this process with what I can only describe as compassionate amusement.

Back at the cottage, I attempted my first proper meal. The kitchen, all terracotta tiles and a proper gas hob, had seemed so promising at 9am. By midday I had produced something involving the tomatoes, garlic, and an aggressive quantity of olive oil that my partner diplomatically called "rustic." The bread from my accidental boulangerie, I must admit, was extraordinary. Crisp shattering crust, interior like cotton wool. I ate three slices with nothing on it but salted butter and felt genuinely emotional about carbohydrates for the first time in my adult life.

The local restaurants, we quickly established, were operating at a level I could never hope to match. There is a particular type of Provencal bistro that serves things like daube de boeuf and tapenade and ratatouille that tastes of actual vegetables rather than the watery regret I had accepted back home. We found one such place on our third evening, tucked down a side street, where the owner recommended wine without a menu and brought out dishes until we physically could not continue. I drank pastis for the first time and understood immediately why it is an acquired taste that I have not yet acquired.

My cooking improved marginally as the week progressed, though this is a relative statement. I mastered the aioli, having purchased a proper mortar and pestle from the market in a fit of optimism. The duck breast I attempted on our fifth night was edible but spiritually defeated, lacking the confident simplicity of anything we ate out. What I did achieve, however, was a genuine appreciation for the rhythm of eating here. The long lunch, the market as social event, the absolute non-negotiability of proper bread.

On our final morning I returned to the boulangerie, this time on foot and through the correct entrance. The same baker was behind the counter. He said nothing about our first meeting, but he did select my baguette with what I chose to interpret as renewed respect. I carried it back through streets still quiet in the early heat, past shuttered houses and the occasional cat, and ate the end off before I reached our gate. Some things, I had learned, do not require improvement. They simply require showing up, parking correctly, and knowing when someone else has already perfected what you were foolish enough to attempt.