I have never been so pleased to see a swimming pool in my entire life, and that includes the time I nearly fell into the fountains at Trafalgar Square after a particularly enthusiastic office Christmas party.

The journey to Creixell had started with such promise. My partner had packed the car with military precision, the children were actually cooperating rather than bickering over who got the middle seat, and I had even remembered to download the right playlist. We were off to Catalonia for a proper family break, one of those cottage-style holidays where the biggest decision of the day is whether to have a siesta before or after lunch. Bliss.

Then, somewhere past Barcelona, disaster struck. Not the dramatic sort with sirens and concerned locals gathering round. No, this was far more humiliating. I had been so smug about my navigational skills, waving off my partner's suggestion to use the sat nav, that I completely missed our turn and ended up driving fifteen miles in the wrong direction. Fifteen miles of increasingly narrow Catalan roads, past orange groves and sleepy villages, with my partner maintaining a pointed silence that spoke louder than any argument. The children found this hilarious, of course. "Dad's taking us to France," my youngest announced, as if this were a deliberate itinerary choice.

By the time we finally reversed our mistake and found the right turning, I had developed what I can only describe as a profound respect for the Catalan road network and a healthy distrust of my own sense of direction. We crawled down a lane lined with pine trees, the afternoon heat shimmering off the tarmac, and there it was: our holiday home, a proper little cottage with terracotta roof tiles and shutters that looked like they'd seen a few summers come and go.

I practically fell out of the car. The children had already spotted the pool through a gap in the garden wall and were making noises I can only compare to a pair of excited puppies. My partner, still maintaining a theatrical air of suffering, actually smiled when she saw the terrace with its vine-covered pergola and the little outdoor kitchen area. "Alright," she admitted, "you've redeemed yourself slightly."

The first thing that struck me about the place was how immediately it felt like somewhere you could actually live, rather than one of those sterile rental properties where you're afraid to touch anything. The kitchen had proper worn wooden surfaces, the sort that have absorbed decades of olive oil and garlic and conversation. Someone had left a bowl of lemons on the counter, presumably from the tree we could see drooping with fruit in the garden. It was the kind of thoughtful touch that makes you relax your shoulders without realising you'd been holding them tense for the last four hours of driving.

I made the obvious dad move of testing the pool before anyone else could, a running jump that I immediately regretted as the surprisingly cold water knocked the breath out of me. The children followed with considerably more grace, and within minutes we were all floating about like contented seals, the late afternoon sun turning everything golden.

That evening, we walked the ten minutes into Creixell itself, a proper working village rather than a tourist fabrication. We found a small restaurant where the owner seemed genuinely surprised to see us, in that lovely unhurried way, and fed us pan con tomate and grilled sardines while the children made friends with a local cat. Walking back in the dark, full and sleepy, my partner took my hand and whispered that perhaps my navigational disaster had been worth it after all.

I didn't have the heart to tell her I'd already worked out a different route home.