I have never been one for sat navs, and my stubbornness finally caught up with me somewhere between Lyon and nowhere. The voice kept insisting I take a left into what looked like a vineyard, and I, being a complete idiot, obliged. Ten minutes of rattling down a stony track later, I found myself face to face with a very unimpressed goat and the slow realisation that I had just trusted a machine over every instinct I possess. Reversing back up in a Renault Clio with the turning circle of a canal boat took twenty minutes and most of my dignity. By the time I reached the actual turning for Suze-la-Rousse, I was ready to abandon the car and walk the rest of the way in a spirit of medieval penance.

The village itself stopped me properly in my tracks though. You come round a bend and there it is, perched up on its little hill with the castle watching over everything like a slightly smug stone guardian. I had booked a place just on the edge, nothing fancy, just a proper stone cottage with a garden and a terrace that looked out towards the vineyards. The sort of place where you immediately start planning which chair you will collapse into and never leave.

The owners had left the key in one of those little lockboxes that always make me feel like I am cracking a safe. I fumbled it, obviously, dropping the key into a lavender bush and spending a good five minutes on my knees apologising to the neighbours for my existence. But then the door swung open and the smell hit me. Old stone and wood polish and something faintly herby from the garden. I stood there like a lemon, bags still in the car, just breathing it in.

The garden was the real star. Not manicured, not trying too hard, just a proper French garden with a scrappy lawn, a few fruit trees, and a terrace with a table that had clearly seen a thousand slow lunches. I dumped my stuff, made the worst cup of coffee of my life because I could not work the little stove-top pot, and carried it outside anyway. It tasted of burnt ambition but I drank every drop sitting in a creaky chair with my feet up on the wall, watching a lizard do press-ups on a warm stone.

I had brought three books and no intention of finishing any of them properly. That first afternoon I managed maybe six pages before dozing off with the sun on my face. Woke up with a crick in my neck and a line from the book imprinted on my cheek. No regrets. The village church bell marked the hours and I found myself actually listening to it, noticing time pass rather than racing to beat it.

The next few days dissolved into a routine of glorious nothing. Morning coffee on the terrace, watching the mist lift off the vines. A wander down to the boulangerie for a baguette that I would tear into on the walk back, unable to wait. Afternoons with a book in the garden, moving my chair every hour to follow the shade like a lazy sundial. The occasional nap. The occasional glance at the castle on the hill and a vague thought that I really ought to visit, followed by the immediate decision that tomorrow would do, or perhaps the day after.

I did make it to the local market once, bought some cheese I could not pronounce and a bottle of something local that the woman selling it described with a shrug that I chose to interpret as high praise. Ate them both in the garden as the light went golden, feeling smug in a way that only doing absolutely nothing can properly earn.

On my last morning I sat with my terrible coffee and watched the same lizard, or perhaps his cousin, on the same warm stone. I thought about all the holidays where I had rushed about, ticking boxes, seeing sights, coming home more tired than I left. This had been the opposite. I had barely moved and yet felt completely shifted, like someone had loosened a knot I did not know I was carrying. The sat nav had tried to ruin everything, and instead it had delivered me exactly where I needed to be.