I'd set my heart on a proper slow holiday, the kind where you forget what day it is and measure time by how cold your coffee has gone. So there I was, rattling down from Granada airport in a hire car that smelled faintly of pine air freshener and regret, heading for a cortijo near the village of Pinos Puente. The Sat Nav had other ideas. It sent me down a track so narrow that olive branches scraped both wing mirrors, and I ended up in someone's farmyard being stared at by three goats and a very unimpressed elderly gentleman in a string vest. Turns out I'd missed the turning by a good mile. Reversing out while giving cheerful, apologetic waves in broken Spanish was not quite the serene arrival I'd pictured.

When I finally found the right place, bumping up a proper gravel drive, I just sat in the car for a moment. The cortijo sat low and cream-coloured against the hillside, with a terrace that seemed to roll straight into the valley below. Terracotta pots, a pergola with vines not yet in leaf, and a pool glinting like a promise. I could already feel my shoulders dropping.

The key was in a lockbox, which felt very spy thriller until I spent five minutes jabbing the code in upside down. Inside, the place had that lovely stillness of somewhere properly empty, waiting to be lived in. Beamed ceilings, tiled floors that stayed cool underfoot, and a kitchen that made me want to attempt a paella I'd almost certainly ruin. I dumped my case unopened and went straight out to the terrace with a beer from the fridge, still warm from the car.

That first evening set the tone entirely. I didn't go anywhere. I watched the light change over the olive groves, counted seven different bird calls I couldn't identify, and let my phone die in my pocket. A neighbour's dog barked somewhere distant. The beer went warm and I didn't care. I'd brought three books and started the wrong one, some murder mystery that felt absurd against such peaceful surroundings. A lizard darted across the wall and I found myself grinning like an idiot.

The next morning I woke without an alarm for the first time in months. The shutters let in strips of light and I lay there listening to absolutely nothing urgent. Breakfast was coffee, bread, and tomatoes grated into that gorgeous mush the Spanish do so well, eaten on the terrace in pyjamas until half eleven. I thought about driving to Pinos Puente for supplies, then didn't. There was enough in the fridge for laziness, and the pool was calling in that seductive way pools have when nobody else is around.

I spent three hours doing very little indeed. Floating, reading the same paragraph repeatedly, dozing with a hat over my face. The water was still brisk enough to make proper swimming a brief affair, but that suited me. Everything here invited lingering. Even the walk down to check the postbox felt like an excursion, past almond trees just beginning to show and that particular dry, herby smell of the Andalusian countryside.

By late afternoon I'd migrated to a sun lounger with the good book, the literary one I'd meant to start. The pages turned slowly. A bee investigated my empty coffee cup. Somewhere in the valley a tractor grumbled, but it only emphasised the quiet. I thought about all the holidays where I'd rushed from sight to sight, ticking boxes, coming home needing another break. This was the antidote, and I was embarrassingly bad at it at first, catching myself planning tomorrow's minimal activities. But the sun and the stillness wore me down in the best way.

That first evening, I walked just to the edge of the property as the light went golden, watching swallows dart above the olive trees. My legs felt heavy in that satisfying way they do after a day of proper rest. I made a simple supper, opened wine that cost embarrassingly little, and sat out until the stars came through. The mishap with the goats felt like it had happened to someone else, someone who hadn't yet learned that getting slightly lost is sometimes how you find exactly where you need to be.