I should have known the sat nav was up to no good the moment it tried to send me up what looked like a goat track outside Malaga. Three hours in a hire car with questionable air conditioning, a toddler who had discovered the word "why," and a boot full of suitcases that definitely did not need to come on a four-night break. My partner, bless him, had insisted we pack the kitchen sink. I had insisted we did not need a fondue set in Andalusia in July. Reader, we brought the fondue set.

The mishap, though. Oh, the mishap. We finally crawled into the village of Benagalbon, which clings to the hills above the Costa del Sol like it is not entirely sure about the twenty-first century, and I was so relieved to see actual buildings that I completely missed the turning. Cue a ten-minute adventure through streets narrower than my patience, with me performing a seventeen-point turn while a small elderly gentleman watched from his doorway with the kind of amused pity usually reserved for tourists trying to pronounce "jamon." I waved. He did not wave back. Fair enough, really.

When we finally found Torre de Benagalbon, I nearly wept. Not dramatic tears, but that particular sort of holiday exhaustion where everything suddenly feels enormous. The villa sits there, all whitewashed walls and terracotta roof tiles, looking like it has been waiting politely for someone to notice it. A proper Andalusian country house, the sort that makes you feel immediately underdressed in your crumpled motorway clothes.

The key was in the lockbox, which I fumbled with for longer than I care to admit, convinced I had forgotten the code in the heat. My partner stood behind me making helpful suggestions. The toddler had found a lizard. Everyone was coping in their own way.

Then the door opened, and the cool hit us like a kind hand on a fevered forehead. Spanish houses know something about heat that British houses simply do not. Thick walls, small windows, a sort of stubborn determination to remain civilised while the world outside turns to molten gold. I stood in the hallway and actually said "oh" out loud, which is not like me. The tiled floors, the wooden beams, the way the light fell through the shutters in stripes. It smelled of clean linen and something faintly herby, rosemary perhaps, from the garden outside.

I had expected tired rental furniture and a faint disappointment. What I found was a kitchen that made me want to cook immediately, despite never wanting to cook, with its proper gas hob and that satisfying clunk of well-made cupboard doors. The sitting room had books, actual books, not the usual decorative spines. I spotted a dog-eared copy of something in Spanish and felt a sudden, embarrassing urge to be the sort of person who reads novels in foreign languages on holiday.

The garden was where I properly lost my composure. A pool, obviously, because one must have a pool, but set among olive trees and hibiscus and that particular dusty green that only happens in southern Spain. Beyond it, the hills rolled away towards the sea, which I could just glimpse, a line of silver in the haze. The toddler was already in his armbands, my partner was investigating the barbecue with the seriousness of a man who has watched too many cooking programmes, and I sat on the terrace with a glass of something cold and local and thought: we made it. The wrong turn, the sat nav, the fondue set still sulking in the car. We made it, and it was worth every single moment of chaos.

I have decided I shall not leave. They can send my post here. I shall learn Spanish properly, not just the restaurant phrases. I shall become mysterious and tanned and someone who knows about olive harvesting. This is, I realise, the standard holiday delusion, but I am allowing it. Some delusions deserve their moment in the Andalusian sun.