By the time we finally spotted the turn-off for Vidreres, I had already eaten three motorway bocadillos, argued with the sat nav in two languages, and somehow managed to spill an entire bottle of water down my only decent pair of linen trousers. The mishap itself was spectacularly daft: I had been wrestling with the rental car's cup holder, convinced I had mastered its secret mechanism, when the bottle launched itself like a small plastic missile straight into my lap. There we were, crawling along the AP-7 in thirty-degree heat, and I looked as though I had had a very small but enthusiastic wee. My partner found this hilarious. I found it less so, particularly as we still had twenty minutes of winding country lanes ahead of us.

The lanes themselves were almost worth the damp discomfort. Cork oaks and pine trees threw dappled shade across the road, and every so often we would round a bend to glimpse a farmhouse or a distant glimpse of the Montseny hills. Proper Catalan countryside, not the manicured sort you see on postcards, but the real, slightly scruffy, utterly charming version. We passed a chap on a scooter with what appeared to be three dogs in a basket, and a roadside stall selling peaches that looked so ripe they were practically apologising for themselves.

The property sat at the end of a gravel track, half-hidden by bougainvillea that had clearly gone feral years ago and never looked back. I will admit that my first thought, still squelching slightly as I climbed out of the car, was whether we had accidentally booked somewhere rather more rustic than intended. The outside was all weathered stone and terracotta, with a pool that glimmered turquoise in the afternoon light and looked so inviting I very nearly forgot about my trousers entirely.

But then Maria, who managed the property, emerged from somewhere with a jug of homemade lemonade and a smile that suggested she had seen far worse than a damp Englishman. She showed us round in a mixture of Catalan, Spanish, and remarkably patient gestures. The kitchen had these beautiful old beams, blackened with decades of cooking, and a proper gas hob that looked like it had hosted a thousand Sunday lunches. The living room opened onto a covered terrace where swallows were already doing their evening circuits, and someone, presumably Maria, had left a bowl of figs from the garden that were so soft they practically dissolved on the tongue.

I think what struck me most, once I had changed into dry clothes and recovered some dignity, was the particular quality of the quiet. Not silence exactly, because there were cicadas going full pelt in the olive trees and distant church bells marking some hour or other, but a kind of settled, purposeful stillness. The sort that makes you realise how much noise you normally carry around in your own head.

We sat on that terrace as the light turned golden, too tired from the journey to do anything more ambitious than open wine and watch the swallows. My partner produced some manchego and fuet from the boot, because we are nothing if not prepared for emergency charcuterie situations. I thought about the water bottle incident and found myself smiling rather than wincing. Some mishaps, I decided, are simply the price of admission for arriving somewhere that already feels, improbably, like somewhere you might belong.

The figs were gone by morning, and the swallows had been replaced by a cockerel with strong opinions, but that first evening stayed with me: damp trousers, warm stone, and the particular peace of having finally, properly, arrived.