I have never been so relieved to see a set of sun loungers in all my life. Twelve hours after leaving a drizzly Luton, I finally pulled up outside our holiday home in Miami Platja, Catalonia, with a boot full of sandy suitcases, a cricked neck, and the distinct smell of warm chorizo that had somehow escaped its wrapping somewhere near Perpignan.

The journey had been one of those classic British holiday odysseys. Up at four, motorway, tunnel, motorway, more motorway, then the slow realisation that French service stations all sell the same sad sandwiches. My partner had insisted on navigating, which meant three dramatic U-turns and one accidental tour of a vineyard near Narbonne. "Scenic route," she called it. I called it something less polite after the third dead end.

The mishap came just as we crossed into Spain. In my excitement to finally spot the sea glinting in the distance, I managed to reverse our hire car into a bollard at a petrol station. A bollard. Painted bright yellow. In broad daylight. The resulting dent was small but deeply embarrassing, and the Spanish attendant who witnessed it gave me a look of such profound pity that I considered driving straight back to Blighty. My partner laughed for a solid twenty minutes. I am still not forgiven.

But then we arrived. And I mean properly arrived, at that moment when you step out of the car and the heat wraps around you like a warm towel fresh from the radiator. The property sat in a quiet residential pocket, all whitewashed walls and terracotta roofs, with palm fronds doing that satisfying rustle they only seem to manage in holiday brochures. Our little terrace looked out towards gardens that someone had clearly tended with genuine care, not the desperate half-measures I attempt with my patio in Croydon.

I will be honest, I had worried. You see these places online, all gleaming tiles and promises, and you half expect to find a broken sun lounger and a fridge that hums like a distressed wasp. Instead, the key safe actually worked first time, which felt like a minor miracle after our day. The door opened to that particular coolness of thick Spanish walls, and the smell of clean linen and somewhere, faintly, jasmine from outside.

The kitchen was compact but properly equipped, not one of those holiday rentals where you get a blunt knife and a pan with no handle. I opened the fridge purely out of habit and stood there like a fool, enjoying the cold air on my face, before remembering I had not actually bought anything to put in it yet. Priorities.

But it was the outside space that truly undid me. After twelve hours of tension and that wretched bollard, I sat on the terrace as the evening light turned everything golden and felt something in my shoulders actually release. A neighbour somewhere was cooking with garlic. Swallows were darting about. My partner brought me a beer from the little shop we had spotted on the way in, and we sat there in that comfortable silence of people who have survived a journey together.

I thought about that dented hire car and laughed. Some things matter enormously in the moment and not at all once you have arrived. The bollard had won the battle, but I was definitely winning the war.