I have never been so grateful for a sat nav giving up on me as I was on the way to our Tordera finca. There we were, me and my partner Dave, trundling through the Catalan countryside in a hire car the size of a postage stamp, when the screen suddenly declared "recalculating" and went properly blank. Just like that. In the middle of nowhere, surrounded by hills that looked like they had never heard of 4G.

Dave, who had insisted he did not need to download offline maps because "technology never fails," did a magnificent job of pretending this was all part of the plan. We ended up in what I can only describe as a goat traffic jam. Actual goats, actual traffic jam. A weathered chap called Miquel was herding them along the lane, and he found our predicament so hilarious that he leaned on his crook wiping tears from his eyes. Through my GCSE Spanish and his enthusiastic pointing, we established that we were only about ten minutes away but had somehow managed to approach from the one direction that required goat negotiation.

Miquel insisted on walking us part of the way, which turned into a proper natter. He had lived in Tordera his whole life, he told us, apart from two years in Manchester in the nineties where he learned English primarily from watching Coronation Street. This explained everything and nothing. He kept calling Dave "our kid" and asking if we knew the Rovers Return. I did not have the heart to tell him it is not real.

By the time we reached the finca, Miquel had invited us to his brother's bar for paella on Sunday, given us three lemons from his own tree, and thoroughly roasted Dave about the sat nav. The property owner, a sharp-eyed woman called Montse, was waiting on the terrace with a jug of something cold and homemade. She had watched our entire approach through binoculars, she admitted without a hint of embarrassment, because "the road brings entertainment." She and Miquel exchanged what I can only describe as deeply Catalan looks, the kind that communicate entire novels of local knowledge and gentle mockery.

Montse showed us around with the efficiency of someone who has done this thousands of times but still finds genuine pleasure in it. The finca was simple, beautifully so, with terracotta floors that stayed cool even in afternoon heat and shutters that creaked with satisfying authenticity. She kept up a running commentary about previous guests, anonymised but vividly described. The German couple who tried to barbecue octopus. The French family who insisted on eating dinner at half past five and were baffled by the empty restaurants. She told these stories with warmth rather than malice, little portraits of people slightly out of their element.

What struck me most, that first evening, was how quickly we shifted from lost tourists to something approaching temporary locals. Montse left us with bread, oil from her cousin's grove, and strict instructions to find her if anything went wrong. "Anything," she emphasised, with the air of someone who had once rescued a guest from a tree at two in the morning. I did not ask for details.

Dave and I sat on the terrace as the light went golden and the hills turned purple, still slightly disorientated from the journey but grinning like idiots. The sat nav sat abandoned in the car, traitorous and silent. I thought about how often I plan holidays within an inch of their lives, every restaurant booked, every route optimised. There was something quietly revolutionary about being found by goats, adopted by Miquel, and observed by Montse's binoculars. I had not expected to feel so immediately, absurdly at home in a place where I could barely follow the conversation.

The paella was excellent, by the way. Miquel's brother, Jordi, spent the entire meal debating with Dave about whether Manchester United or City had the more depressing recent history, a conversation that required no shared first language whatsoever. I watched them gesticulate and laugh and occasionally consult Google Translate for the precise word for "midfield," and I realised this was exactly the kind of holiday I did not know I needed. Sometimes the best thing your technology can do is fail you completely.