I should have known the holiday was going to be characterful when I got us lost before we'd even reached Zahara de la Sierra. My partner Dave had entrusted me with the Sat Nav duties for our drive from Malaga Airport, and I managed to confuse "Zahara" with "Zara" - yes, the clothing shop - which led us on a merry twenty-minute detour through an industrial estate on the outskirts of some town neither of us can pronounce. Dave was remarkably restrained. He only mentioned it seventeen times that evening.

The approach to Zahara itself made up for everything. You round a bend on the A-376 and suddenly there's this whitewashed village clinging to a hillside, a proper fortress of a place with a castle perched on top like a cherry on a cake. Our holiday home sat on the edge of the village, and I immediately spotted our host Miguel leaning against his battered SEAT, smoking and chatting with a man I later learned was Pepe, the retired baker.

Miguel spotted our hire car before we did and waved us over with the confidence of a man who has directed countless confused Brits. "You took the scenic route," he said, deadpan, before we'd even opened the doors. I liked him instantly.

He showed us round the house with theatrical flourishes, pointing out the terrace view of the Zahara-El Gastor reservoir with the pride of someone who'd personally built both the lake and the mountains behind it. "My grandfather fished there," he said, gesturing at the water. "Never caught anything. Terrible fisherman. But happy." This seemed to be the local philosophy in a nutshell.

Pepe had followed us in and made himself comfortable on our kitchen chair without any invitation whatsoever. "You English?" he asked, though the answer was presumably obvious from Dave's sunburn and my hopeless attempt at parking. "I went to Blackpool once. Rained every day. Beautiful." He said this with complete sincerity, and I didn't have the heart to question his definition of beautiful.

The pair of them spent a good forty minutes in our kitchen that first afternoon, Miguel explaining the boiler and Pepe largely ignoring him to tell us about his cousin in Birmingham. "She married a man who repairs washing machines. Very successful. Two cars." This was delivered as though describing royalty. When we finally mentioned we might walk into the village for supplies, Pepe insisted on coming along to "protect us from the tourists," which seemed rich coming from someone who'd invited himself into our holiday let.

The walk took forty minutes because Pepe stopped to speak to absolutely everyone. There was Carmen, sweeping her doorstep with ferocious energy, who wanted to know if we were married and why not. There was young Javier, supposedly running his father's tapas bar but mainly standing outside it on his phone, who Pepe berated for his posture while simultaneously asking after his mother's hip operation. Each conversation required a full recap of who we were, where we'd got lost, and Pepe's assessment of Blackpool.

By the time we reached the little supermarket, I'd learned that Miguel had been a champion domino player in his youth, that Carmen's grandson was "too clever for his own good" and studying in Granada, and that Javier's mother's hip was "better, thank you, but she still complains." Dave, who normally takes weeks to learn a neighbour's name, was somehow already embedded in village life.

That evening we sat on our terrace with cheap local wine and watched the sun drop behind the sierra. Somewhere below, Pepe's voice carried up through the narrow streets as he conducted another impromptu social call. "I think," Dave said, swirling his glass with unexpected thoughtfulness, "we might have accidentally joined a community rather than just hired a house."

He wasn't wrong. And I didn't even mind that he'd reached eighteen mentions of my navigational failure by bedtime.