I have never been so grateful for air conditioning in all my life. The drive from Seville to Constantina had seemed like a brilliant idea back in February, when I had booked this cottage in the Sierra Morena mountains. "Escape the British winter," I told myself. "Proper Spanish heat." Well, I certainly found it.

The journey itself started well enough. I had hired a Fiat Panda that was roughly the size of a shopping trolley, crammed it with cases, and headed north on the A-4 with the windows down and my holiday playlist blaring. The olive groves flashed past in a silvery blur, and I felt terribly continental. Then, somewhere past Carmona, I realised I had made a classic error. I had been so proud of downloading offline maps that I had not actually checked whether they were for the right Constantina. There are, I now know, at least three places with similar names in Andalusia. Mine was the one in Seville province, not the one in Malaga. My phone, helpful as ever, had been quietly routing me towards the wrong one for twenty minutes.

I discovered this in a petrol station car park, sweating through my linen shirt, arguing with a map on a screen the size of a digestive biscuit. A lovely older chap filling up his Renault watched me flap about for a bit, then wandered over and sorted me out in approximately thirty seconds. "Sierra Morena," he said, pointing north with the authority of a man who had never once trusted Google. I reversed out with what dignity I could muster and headed back the way I had come.

By the time I actually reached the cottage, it was late afternoon and the heat had settled into something almost physical. August in Andalusia does not mess about. The air smells of baked earth and wild thyme, and the cicadas make a noise like someone has left a machine running. I pulled up a dusty track, gravel crunching under tyres that were probably never designed for rural Spain, and there it was. A low whitewashed building with terracotta roof tiles, wooden shutters closed against the sun, and a covered terrace that promised shade and possibly a cold drink.

The key was where the owner had said it would be, in a little metal box by the door. I fumbled with the code, my fingers slippery, and stepped inside. The temperature drop was immediate and almost shocking. Thick stone walls, I remembered reading. Built for exactly this. The interior was simple and cool, tiled floors that felt lovely underfoot, wooden beams dark with age. I dumped my bags and headed straight for the kitchen, filled a glass with water, and stood in the doorway looking out.

The garden was not the manicured English lawn of my imagination. It was better. Dry grasses, lavender, a few hardy geraniums managing in terracotta pots, and beyond it the mountains hazing in the heat. Everything looked slightly bleached, slightly worn, as if the sun had been at it for centuries. Which, of course, it had.

That first evening, I did almost nothing. I sat on the terrace with a beer from the village shop, watching the light change. The heat loosened its grip by degrees, and around eight o'clock a breeze started up, carrying the scent of pine from higher up. Swallows began their evening circuits, and somewhere a dog barked in a lazy, unconcerned way. I had planned to drive into Constantina proper for dinner, to explore the castle ruins, to be a proper tourist. Instead I ate bread and cheese and tomatoes in the garden, wearing the same damp shirt, and felt absolutely no guilt whatsoever.

The season had forced my hand, really. August in Andalusia demands a slower pace. The siesta is not quaint tradition; it is survival strategy. I understood now why the shutters were closed, why the village streets had been empty when I passed through, why even the goats had looked at me with faint concern. This was not a time for charging about. This was a time for early mornings, late evenings, and long still hours in between.

I fell asleep that night with the windows open, no sheet, listening to the cicadas. Somewhere in the dark, an owl called. I thought about my wrong turn, my sweaty panic, my ridiculous maps. I thought about how sometimes getting slightly lost is the only way to arrive properly. And I thought, already half dreaming, that tomorrow I would get up early, before the heat, and walk up into those hills and see what I could see.