I should have known the holiday was going to be eventful when I spent twenty minutes arguing with the sat nav in Gran Canaria, convinced it had sent me down a goat track. Turns out that narrow lane was indeed the correct road to our cottage in San Bartolome de Tirajana, and the goats were merely local residents giving me the side-eye as I crawled past in my hire car, white-knuckled and muttering apologies.

We had flown into Las Palmas that morning, collected a cheerful red Fiat that smelled faintly of pine air freshener and regret, and headed south with the sort of optimism that only a week off work can produce. The journey through the island's interior was proper lovely, all volcanic ridges and sudden glimpses of the Atlantic far below. My wife dozed. The kids bickered about whose turn it was for the tablet. I gripped the steering wheel and pretended I was completely relaxed about driving on the right.

The mishap came as we finally spotted our destination, a charming whitewashed cottage with a small garden and a terrace that promised evening glasses of something cold. I swung into the gravel drive with the confidence of a man who had navigated actual goats, failed to notice the slightly raised lip where drive met road, and scraped the underside of the car with a sound like a dinosaur clearing its throat. Everyone woke up. Even the goats, had they been following, would have winced.

I sat there for a moment, engine running, wondering if I could blame the hire company. My wife gave me that look, the one that says she will definitely be mentioning this in Christmas speeches for years to come. The kids, bless them, found it hilarious and immediately began reenacting the noise with concerning accuracy.

But then we stepped out into the warm afternoon air, and something shifted. The cottage sat nestled among low stone walls and flowering shrubs, with the mountains rising behind and a glimpse of distant blue sea to remind us where we actually were. A covered terrace ran along one side, furnished with a wooden table that looked like it had hosted a thousand lazy lunches. The pool, modest but perfectly inviting, glinted in the sunlight. Somewhere nearby, a cockerel expressed an opinion.

Inside, the place had that lived-in, unpretentious charm that you cannot manufacture. Terracotta tiles underfoot, simple wooden furniture, a kitchen that announced itself as functional rather than fashionable. The bedrooms were cool and dark, shutters half-closed against the afternoon heat. My daughter claimed the twin room immediately, drawn by a window seat perfect for reading. My son investigated the bathroom with the thoroughness of a health inspector, then pronounced it acceptable, which counts as enthusiastic praise from a twelve-year-old.

I made us all proper cups of tea using the kettle that took approximately one geological age to boil, and we carried them out to the terrace. The scrape on the car already felt like someone else's story. We sat there in our travel-worn clothes, surrounded by the quiet of a village that clearly had no particular hurry to be anywhere else, and watched the light begin to soften towards evening.

That first evening set the pattern without us even realising. A simple supper from the little supermarket in nearby San Bartolome village, eaten outside as the temperature dropped to perfectly pleasant. The kids eventually in bed, exhausted by travel and swimming pool anticipation. My wife and I remaining at that wooden table, sharing a bottle of local wine, listening to the unfamiliar night sounds and not much else.

I kept waiting to feel restless, that holiday urge to be doing something, going somewhere, ticking boxes. It never arrived. The cottage had worked some small magic, helped considerably by my spectacular arrival, and we settled into a rhythm of books and swimming and occasional gentle expeditions to nearby places that did not require heroic navigation.

By day three, I could find the cottage without swearing at the sat nav. By day five, I was greeting the goats like old acquaintances. And on our final morning, I almost scraped the car again on the way out, purely for old times' sake, but managed to resist. Some memories, it turns out, are best left singular.