I have never been brilliant with directions, which is how I found myself driving the wrong way down a one-way street in Olbia, frantically waving apology at a man on a scooter who looked like he had seen this exact scene a hundred times before. My wife was navigating, my children were arguing about who had more legroom, and our suitcases were doing an excellent impression of a small landslide in the boot. By the time we actually reached the villa in Porto Rotondo, I was ready to abandon the hire car in a bush and walk the rest of the way.

But then we turned onto the lane, and something shifted. The noise of the journey fell away. There were pine trees everywhere, that particular Mediterranean kind that smell like summer itself, and beyond them glimpses of water so blue it looked almost theatrical. I kept waiting for someone to adjust the saturation.

The villa sat at the end of a dusty track, the sort that makes you worry you have made a terrible mistake until suddenly you have not. It was low and white with a terracotta roof, nothing flashy, which was exactly the point. A cottage-style holiday, that was what we had wanted. No hotel buffet queues, no fighting for sun loungers with German tourists at six in the morning. Just us, a kitchen that smelled faintly of last week's garlic, and a terrace where lizards did push-ups on the warm stones.

My daughter discovered the outdoor shower first and treated it like a personal spa. My son found a lemon tree heavy with fruit and immediately tried to climb it, which ended about as well as you would expect. I stood there with a warm beer from the supermarket in Olbia, still half-convinced I had forgotten to lock the hire car, and watched the light change over the water. That particular late-afternoon gold you get in Sardinia, thick and honeyed, turning everything slightly magical.

The kitchen was small and honest. Nothing matching, a cooker that required a bit of negotiation, fridge humming with the enthusiasm of something that had been doing its job since the nineties. We cooked pasta that evening with tomatoes from a roadside stall, basil from a pot on the windowsill, cheese that cost less than a packet of crisps back home. The children ate at the little table outside while my wife and I stood at the counter with wine glasses, not talking much, which felt like the achievement of the week already.

I kept thinking about that wrong turn in Olbia. How stressed I had been, how convinced that the whole holiday was ruined before it began. I do this sometimes, catastrophise the small stuff until the big stuff gets ignored. But here was the big stuff, quietly happening. My son laughing with lemon juice on his chin. The distant sound of a boat engine. The particular creak of the garden gate in the evening breeze.

Porto Rotondo itself was close enough to wander down to, though we did not that first night. We were too busy settling into the rhythm of the place, finding which floorboard squeaked, working out that the hot water needed a full five minutes of patience, discovering that the best spot for morning coffee was the bench facing east where the sun hit just right. These small domestic victories felt more satisfying than any sightseeing could have.

By the time we fell into beds with slightly stiff sheets and windows open to the night insects, I had forgotten the journey entirely. Almost. There was still a parking ticket somewhere in my future, I suspected, or at least a strongly worded note from the car hire company. But that was tomorrow's problem, or next week's, or possibly never's. For now there was the sound of the sea somewhere below, my wife's breathing already slowing beside me, and the absolute certainty that we had done something right in choosing this ordinary, perfect little house on the edge of the Sardinian coast.