I should have known the holiday was going to be eventful when our sat nav decided Algamitas did not, in fact, exist. There we were, two hours after landing at Malaga, crawling along an A-road somewhere between Seville and nowhere, while our nine-year-old asked for the sixth time whether we were lost and I maintained with increasing desperation that this was "the scenic route." My other half, who had been in charge of printing directions as backup, pulled a crumpled sheet from his pocket that turned out to be the booking confirmation for entirely the wrong property in entirely the wrong county. I laughed. It was that or cry into my travel sweets.

We found it eventually, of course. A white-washed finca sitting pretty on a hillside, olive groves rolling away in every direction like a dusty green sea. The key was in a lockbox, which took me ten minutes and some creative language to open, by which point a small lizard had taken up residence on the wall beside me and seemed to be judging my technique. The door swung open to cool tile floors, wooden beams, and that particular smell of somewhere that has been properly lived in rather than aggressively styled. I loved it instantly.

The kitchen was compact but sensible, the sort where everything you need is within arm's reach if you do not mind performing a minor yoga pose to reach the good frying pan. We dumped our bags and the children vanished to investigate the pool, which was not Olympic-sized but perfectly adequate for the serious business of splashing and Marco Polo. I stood on the terrace with a glass of something local and red, watching the light turn golden across the valley, and felt something in my shoulders finally drop.

That first evening, we did not attempt anything ambitious. There was a small shop in the village for bread and cheese and tomatoes that actually tasted of something, plus a bottle of olive oil pressed from groves I could practically see from the garden. We ate outside as the temperature settled into something bearable, the children chattering about lizards and pool rules and whether we could have ice cream tomorrow. My other half and I exchanged a look that said, without words, that we had absolutely made the right call in choosing somewhere small and simple over one of those enormous resorts with organised entertainment and queues for everything.

I suppose what struck me most, that first day, was how quickly the noise in my head began to quieten. No work emails pinging, no traffic, no desperate need to be anywhere or achieve anything beyond keeping everyone fed and moderately sun-screened. There was something almost rebellious about it, this deliberate embrace of doing very little in a world that usually demands the opposite. I watched a gecko stalk a moth across the wall for a full ten minutes. I cannot remember the last time I gave anything that kind of uninterrupted attention.

The mishaps continued, naturally. I forgot to buy coffee for the morning and had to drive back to the village in my pyjamas, waving cheerfully at an elderly man who was already up and tending his garden. The pool filter made a noise like a disgruntled goose for the first two days until my other half performed some percussive maintenance. But these small dramas felt like part of the texture rather than interruptions to it, the gentle comedy of family life transplanted somewhere warmer and slower.

By day three, I had stopped checking my watch. The children had adopted a routine of pool, snack, pool, late lunch, pool, which suited everyone. I read half a novel I had been carrying around since Christmas. We took a walk through the olive groves one morning and saw nothing but a distant farmhouse and a lot of very contented-looking goats. That was the outing. It was perfect.

I think the best holidays are the ones that remind you how little you actually need to be happy. A simple house, good light, space to breathe, and the people you have chosen to be with. Everything else is just noise, and Algamitas turned out to be the perfect place to turn the volume right down.