I have never been so pleased to see a goat in all my life. But I am getting ahead of myself.

The drive from Seville airport to Guillena took about forty minutes, which in Andalusian terms means anywhere between thirty minutes and two hours depending on how many tractors you get stuck behind. I had booked a converted farmhouse, one of those proper rustic jobs with a pool and terracotta tiles and the promise of proper peace and quiet. What I had not accounted for was my own spectacular talent for navigation.

I turned off the main road following what I confidently told my partner was a "scenic shortcut." It was scenic, certainly. Olive groves stretched in every direction, silver-green leaves shimmering in the afternoon heat. It was also, as we discovered twenty minutes later, entirely the wrong scenic. The track narrowed, then narrowed again, until we were essentially driving through someone's orchard with branches scraping both sides of the hire car. My partner, who had been reading quietly, put her book down with that particular silence that speaks volumes.

"We're nearly there," I said, for the third time.

A goat appeared on a rock. It stared at us with the expression of someone who has seen this exact scene play out many times before. Tourists. Lost tourists. It was, I realised with a sinking feeling, the first living creature we had encountered in half an hour. I stopped the car and got out, partly to stretch my legs and partly to delay the inevitable conversation about whose idea the shortcut had been. The goat watched me approach. I have no idea what I intended to ask it. Directions, perhaps. A bit of local wisdom.

What happened next was pure farce. I reached for my phone to check the map, stepped on a loose stone, and performed what I can only describe as an involuntary flamenco move. Arms windmilling, one leg shooting sideways, I somehow stayed upright but lost my sunglasses, my dignity, and any remaining authority regarding route planning. The goat, unimpressed, wandered off. My partner, who had filmed the entire performance from the passenger seat, was laughing too hard to speak.

We eventually found the proper road, and then the farmhouse, and I will admit that my first impression was coloured entirely by relief. But what a place. Thick whitewashed walls, wooden beams dark with age, a courtyard where jasmine climbed lazily up drainpipes. The owner, a woman called Maria with hands that looked like they could mend anything, showed us round with patient good humour. She did not mention the goat. I suspect she knew.

The pool was small and perfect, fed by something that kept it several degrees cooler than the air. I stood at the edge that first evening, still warm from the drive, and watched swallows dart across a sky the colour of ripe apricots. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked once and thought better of it. The silence settled over everything like a blanket.

I had planned, rather ambitiously, for us to spend the week hiking. Proper walking, serious boots, Ordnance Survey levels of preparation. The Sierra Norte de Sevilla was practically on the doorstep, all cork oak forests and limestone ridges. I had read about trails following old railway lines, about routes through abandoned mining villages, about views that stretched to Portugal on clear days. I had packed maps, compasses, energy bars. I was ready.

The heat had other ideas.

The first morning, we set off before seven, sensible people that we were. By nine the temperature had climbed past thirty degrees, and my serious boots had become portable saunas. We found a stream, mercifully, and sat with our feet in the water like a pair of exhausted herons. The landscape was beautiful, no question. Dry earth the colour of cinnamon, holm oaks casting just enough shade to be tantalising, the occasional flash of a hoopoe's wing. But beautiful and sensible are different things, and by ten we had turned back, defeated by our own enthusiasm and the Andalusian sun's complete indifference to it.

Maria found us at the farmhouse, red-faced and drinking water by the litre. She said something in Spanish that my limited vocabulary translated roughly as "mad dogs and Englishmen," then suggested we try the river walks instead. Lower ground, more shade, possible swimming. She made it sound like a concession rather than a retreat, which I appreciated.

So our plans shifted, as holiday plans do if you let them. We walked early mornings along the Guadiamar, where the water runs slow and brown between reed beds, and kingfishers blur past in electric flashes. We found stretches where you could wade in up to your knees, the current gentle enough to be refreshing rather than alarming. Dragonflies the size of small helicopters patrolled the shallows. Once, standing very still, I watched a terrapin haul itself onto a half-submerged log and simply rest there, doing nothing in particular, with the absolute confidence of something that has never once worried about being productive.

The afternoons became ours for slower pleasures. Reading in the courtyard, the jasmine scent thick enough to taste. Occasional forays to the village for bread and cheese and whatever fish looked freshest. Siestas that stretched longer than intended, that peculiar holiday guilt giving way eventually to acceptance.

On our fourth day, we attempted a longer walk to a nearby reservoir, setting out at six in the morning with head torches and packed lunches. The dawn was spectacular, mist hanging in the valleys, the first light catching the dew on spider webs so they looked like strings of tiny pearls. We walked for three hours, saw no one, reached the water as the heat was beginning to build. I swam out to a small island, something I would never attempt in colder water, and lay on sun-warmed rock like a seal. My partner waved from the shore, small and distant.

That evening, Maria brought us tomatoes from her garden, still warm from the day. We ate them with salt and olive oil, nothing else, and they tasted of everything that was good about being there. I thought about the goat, briefly, and smiled. Some wrong turns lead you exactly where you need to be.