I have never been brilliant at reading maps, which is how I found myself reversing down a one-way farm track just outside Porto do Son with a very cross-looking goat staring at me through the windscreen. My partner was doing that peculiar breathing thing where they pretend to be calm but are actually considering divorce. We had been driving from Santiago de Compostela airport for what felt like three pleasant hours of Galician countryside, and I had got it into my head that our holiday home would be obvious, impossible to miss, perhaps with a neon sign. It was not. It was, however, worth every wrong turn.

The property sat on a gentle slope looking towards the Ria de Muros e Noia, and the first thing that struck me was how quiet everything felt. Not the uncomfortable quiet of a faulty fridge, but the thick, golden quiet of a place that has absolutely no intention of hurrying anywhere. I stood in the driveway with my suitcase still unpacked and simply let the sun warm my face. The goat, mercifully, had not followed us.

Our first morning set the tone for everything that followed. I woke without an alarm, which in itself felt faintly rebellious, and wandered out to the terrace with a cup of coffee that tasted better than any coffee has a right to. The plan had been to explore properly, to tick off beaches and perhaps find a lighthouse to photograph. Instead I opened my book, adjusted the sun lounger approximately six times until it was exactly right, and did not move for four hours. My partner went for a brief walk to the little shop in the village and returned with bread, cheese, and the news that they had seen an elderly man fishing from the rocks in complete silence. This seemed to us the height of sophistication.

The days developed their own gentle rhythm. We would rise late, eat breakfast on the terrace while watching the light change on the water, and then argue pleasantly about whether to walk to the nearest cove or simply relocate to a different patch of sunlight. The cove usually won, though victory felt academic since we spent most of our time there horizontal on towels, reading the same paragraphs repeatedly because the warmth made concentration optional. I finished one book in a week, which is either impressive or pathetic depending on your standards, and I have never been prouder of anything.

We did explore locally, of course, but even our expeditions felt gloriously unambitious. A stroll to the harbour to watch the fishing boats come in, a slow lunch of pulpo a feira at a tiny place where the owner seemed faintly surprised to see customers, an afternoon wandering the promenade with an ice cream that melted faster than we could eat it. Everything within a few miles of Porto do Son felt designed for people who had forgotten what rushing felt like and had no desire to remember.

I found myself reflecting, somewhere around day five, on how peculiar it was that doing nothing required such deliberate effort. At home I would feel guilty about an unproductive afternoon, yet here the absence of achievement felt like its own small victory. The sunshine had somehow rewired my brain to accept that watching a bee investigate a flower for ten minutes was a legitimate use of time.

On our final evening we sat on the terrace with glasses of Albarino, watching the sun lower itself towards the horizon with the unhurried grace of something that knows it will return tomorrow. I thought about the goat, and the wrong turn, and how sometimes getting slightly lost delivers you exactly where you needed to be.