I have never been so relieved to see a hole in the ground in all my life. Seventeen hours after leaving a drizzly Gatwick, there it was: our cave house in Cuevas del Almanzora, Andalusia, a whitewashed hobbit dwelling carved into dusty ochre hillside. But I am getting ahead of myself. The journey first.

We flew to Almeria, which felt pleasingly obscure, like we had discovered somewhere the crowds had not. Hired a Fiat Panda that smelled of pine air freshener and regret. Then came the drive through lunar landscapes, all scrub and dried riverbeds, the sort of scenery that makes you wonder if you have accidentally driven onto a film set for a spaghetti western. My partner navigated using a phone that overheated twice. I drove with the concentration of someone defusing a bomb, terrified of scratching the Fiat on walls built closer to the road than felt strictly necessary.

The mishap happened three miles out. Nature called with some urgency. We pulled into what I thought was a deserted olive grove. It was not deserted. An elderly gentleman emerged from behind a tree, adjusting his trousers, with the sort of expression that suggested I had interrupted a sacred ritual. We locked eyes. I reversed with theatrical haste, scattering gravel, dignity left somewhere among the ancient gnarled trunks. My partner has not let me forget it. "The olive grove incident," she calls it, like it belongs in some diplomatic memoir.

By the time we reached the property, I was vibrating with caffeine and mild trauma. The key was in a lockbox, which I fumbled with for an embarrassing length of time, convinced our entire holiday would be spent sleeping in the Panda. Then the door swung open and cool air washed over us, that particular underground coolness that makes you understand immediately why people have lived in caves here for millennia. It was not dark or gloomy, as I had half-feared. Light poured through a clever skylight, bouncing off curved white walls. The living space opened before us, all arches and rounded corners, nothing straight or sharp. I felt like we had stepped into something handmade and honest.

The kitchen sat at one end, simple and white, with terracotta tiles underfoot that still held the day's warmth. I ran my hand along a wall, expecting damp, finding instead perfect dryness, the mountain doing what mountains do. Outside, a terrace clung to the slope, and we stood there as the sun dropped behind ridges that turned from gold to rust to deep purple. Somewhere a dog barked. Somewhere else, someone was cooking with garlic. The Fiat's air freshener suddenly seemed very far away.

I will admit something here. I had worried this would feel like a gimmick, staying in a cave, something to post about rather than actually enjoy. A bit try-hard, perhaps. But standing on that terrace, watching swallows dart through the amber evening, I felt something shift. The olive grove embarrassment faded. The long journey dissolved. There was just this: a human-scaled space, cool and quiet, embedded in a landscape that has seen Romans and Moors and countless others seeking the same simple thing. Shelter. Stillness. A place to arrive at.

My partner poured us glasses of wine we had bought at an airport shop, which tasted better than it had any right to. We did not unpack. We did not explore. We simply sat, letting the place settle around us, feeling the particular peace of being underground without being buried, of being hidden without being lost.

Tomorrow we might walk to the village, find somewhere for tapas, attempt to be functional humans again. But that first evening, we just were. And sometimes, after seventeen hours and one mortifying olive grove, just being is exactly enough.