I have never been so happy to see a goat in all my life.

The drive from Kalamata airport to Leventochori had been straightforward enough, if you consider navigating Greek rural roads in a hire car the size of a toaster straightforward. My partner had insisted on doing the driving, which meant I was chief navigator, a role I performed with the confidence of someone who had briefly glanced at a map three hours earlier. We wound through olive groves and past sleepy villages, the Peloponnese sun already doing its best to melt the tarmac, and I kept up a steady commentary of "left here, probably" and "this looks right, doesn't it?" that would have tested the patience of a saint.

The mishap came at the final turn. I spotted a narrow track between stone walls and announced it with the triumph of Columbus discovering America. We bumped along for a good five minutes, the car making noises that suggested it might file a complaint with its union, before emerging into a farmyard where an elderly gentleman was having his afternoon coffee. He looked up with the resigned expression of someone who had seen this before. Through a combination of gestures, my terrible Greek, and his excellent English, we established that I had directed us to his cousin's property. The correct turn had been fifty metres back, clearly marked, obviously the right one. We reversed out with what dignity we could muster, the goat watching from a nearby wall with what I can only describe as professional interest.

When we finally found the cottage, I was ready to collapse into a chair and never move again. And that, as it turned out, was precisely the right instinct.

The place had that particular stillness you only find in proper countryside. A low stone building with a terracotta roof, surrounded by a garden that had clearly been loved into submission rather than manicured within an inch of its life. Lemon trees heavy with fruit. A fig tree in the corner that would become my afternoon headquarters. The sort of garden where lizards dart across warm stones and bees move with the unhurried purpose of creatures with nowhere particular to be.

I had brought three books with the vague intention of "getting through them." I read perhaps ten pages of the first one in the entire fortnight. The rest of the time I simply sat with them, the open pages a kind of permission slip to do nothing at all. There was a hammock strung between two trees that squeaked pleasantly in any breeze, and I became an expert in its rhythms. Morning sun on one side, afternoon shade on the other. The fig tree offered its own schedule, dropping ripe fruit with soft thuds that became my version of a town hall clock.

My partner developed a routine of making coffee in the little kitchen and bringing it outside, where we would drink it without speaking much, watching the swallows trace their patterns overhead. We had intended to visit nearby beaches, perhaps drive to Olympia, tick off the recommended sights. Some days we walked the twenty minutes to the village for bread and tomatoes, and that felt like sufficient adventure. Other days we did not even manage that, existing instead on whatever was in the fridge and the lemons that fell within arm's reach.

There is something humbling about discovering how little you actually need to be content. I am someone who normally fills holidays with activity, who returns home needing another break to recover from the break. Here, the ambition drained out of me like water from a bath. I napped without guilt. I stared at clouds and tried to remember the names of shapes I had known as a child. I ate figs until my fingers were sticky and did not wash them immediately.

The goat, had it seen me in those days, would have recognised a kindred spirit.