I should have known the holiday was going to be eventful when our sat nav decided Nans-les-Pins did not exist. There we were, three hours out of Marseille, crawling through pine forests in a hire car the size of a small boat, while my wife Claire scrolled furiously on her phone and the kids asked for the sixth time if we were nearly there. "Dad said twenty minutes," announced my youngest, with the triumphant air of someone catching out a serial liar.

The mishap came at a village roundabout somewhere near Saint-Maximin. I took what I thought was the correct exit, failed to notice the low stone wall bordering a vineyard, and scraped the passenger side mirror clean off. It dangled there like a broken wing, winking accusingly at me in the Provencal sunlight. Claire made that noise she makes, the one that isn't quite a sigh but carries the weight of fifteen years of my driving. We limped the final few miles with me gripping the wheel like a learner, mirror stuffed in the boot, arriving at our cottage looking slightly less elegant than planned.

But then we turned up the gravel drive, and I forgot about the mirror entirely.

The place sat among cork oaks and pines, a low stone building with that weathered honey colour you only seem to get in Provence. Terracotta pots flanked the door, stuffed with lavender already going silvery at the edges. A cat from somewhere in the hamlet watched us from the wall with the relaxed entitlement of a local who has seen countless hapless British families arrive and depart. I half-expected it to demand our papers.

Inside smelled of pine and old stone, that particular coolness you get when thick walls have kept out centuries of summer heat. The kitchen had terracotta tiles and a proper cooker, the sort that makes you want to attempt elaborate Provencal dishes you have absolutely no business attempting. Claire immediately opened the shutters, flooding the sitting room with light, while the kids discovered the garden and began a spirited argument about who had spotted the first lizard.

I made a hash of the first evening, naturally. Overconfident from a glass of local rose, I attempted to light the barbecue using what I believed to be proper French charcoal technique. Forty minutes later I was blowing desperately on barely-glowing briquettes, smoke in my eyes, while Claire wordlessly retrieved the emergency camping stove from the car. We ate sausages cooked on a single ring at half past nine, sitting on the terrace with crickets shouting all around us and the last warmth of the day rising from the stone beneath our feet. It was, I admitted through a mouthful of slightly singed merguez, absolutely perfect.

That first night I lay awake longer than usual, listening to unfamiliar silence broken only by pine needles shifting on the roof. The kids had finally collapsed after their travel excitement, Claire was breathing that steady rhythm I know too well. I thought about the mirror in the boot, the ridiculous barbecue, my stubbornness with directions. Here we were though, in this solid quiet place, surrounded by the smell of thyme and dry earth. The mishaps felt already like part of the story, the necessary comedy before the proper settling in.

The cat appeared at breakfast, naturally, and I gave it a bit of my croissant. Some things you simply do in Provence, regardless of what you intended.