I have never been brilliant at packing, and this trip proved it in spectacular fashion. Somewhere between Gatwick and Gran Canaria, my son's swimming trunks, my factor 50, and somehow every single pair of socks in the suitcase vanished into the mysterious black hole of budget airline travel. We arrived at San Bartolome Tirajana standing in blazing sunshine with me clutching a carrier bag of duty-free Toblerone and a vague sense of dread.

The drive up from the airport had already done its work on my nerves. Gran Canaria's southern roads twist through lunar landscapes of volcanic rock that look like someone forgot to finish building the world properly. My husband drove with that particular set to his jaw that means he is pretending not to be terrified of the hire car's suspicious clutch. The kids had fallen into that post-flight stupor, headphones in, occasionally emitting grunts that might have been commentary on the scenery or possibly just digestive complaints from the in-flight toastie.

Then we turned into San Bartolome Tirajana itself, and something shifted. The village sits in this extraordinary bowl of mountains, proper dramatic stuff, with whitewashed houses clinging to hillsides and enough bougainvillea to make you wonder if the entire place was designed by someone with a magenta obsession. Our cottage was down a narrow lane where the sat-nav finally gave up entirely, which I took as a promising sign. Technology surrendering to old-fashioned directions and a friendly neighbour pointing with a trowel still in her hand.

The place itself was exactly that slightly rambling, cottage-style holiday home you hope for but rarely get. Terracotta floors that stay deliciously cool underfoot, wooden beams that have probably witnessed forty years of British families arriving slightly frazzled, and a kitchen that understood the sacred importance of a proper kettle. The kids bolted straight past the charming sitting area with its local pottery and woven rugs, straight out to the terrace and the pool beyond. I stood in the doorway with my ridiculous Toblerone bag and felt something in my shoulders actually release.

What struck me immediately was the quiet. Not silence exactly, because Gran Canaria's countryside hums with insects and distant goats and that particular dry rustle of palm fronds, but the absence of that constant low-grade urban static your brain stops noticing until it stops. No traffic drone, no neighbour's telly through walls thick as a postcard. Just space and warmth and the faint chlorine promise of that pool glinting below the terrace.

I made the rookie mistake of attempting a supermarket run before unpacking, which in a Spanish village at siesta time is essentially a competitive sport you are destined to lose. Three shops closed, one open but staffed by a man deeply unimpressed with my pronunciation of "champu," and a triumphant return with sun cream that turned out to be after-sun, which is not the same thing at all when you are as pale as I am. My husband found this hilarious until he realised he had packed his own swimming trunks and nothing else suitable for dinner out.

By evening we were established on that terrace with supermarket wine that cost less than a London coffee, watching the mountains turn that extraordinary volcanic purple as the sun dropped. The kids had exhausted themselves into actual human beings, playing cards rather than bickering, and I caught myself doing that thing I always promise not to do on holiday, already planning the week ahead, already worrying about the return journey. I made myself stop. The trunks would sort themselves, the socks were clearly living their best life somewhere over the Atlantic, and we had six more evenings exactly like this one stretching ahead.

That first night I slept better than I had in months, waking to goat bells and the smell of proper coffee from the kitchen where my husband had already given up on the complicated machine and resorted to the hob-top pot. We had nowhere particular to be, nothing demanding our attention beyond whether the pool was warm enough yet and which of the village's handful of cafes might do a decent tortilla. It was, and they did, and I sat there with my third coffee knowing that sometimes the holidays that begin with small disasters turn out to be the ones you actually needed all along.