By the time we finally found Villa Elefant, I was already sweating through my third t-shirt of the day and my other half had that particular set to her jaw that meant someone was getting blamed for the sat nav fiasco. That someone, predictably, was me. In my defence, the villa's tucked up in the hills above Sant Antoni de Portmany, and I had confidently directed us down what turned out to be someone's private olive grove. A very angry dog and a very amused elderly man later, we reversed back up a track that was definitely not designed for a Fiat Panda and eventually spotted the proper turning. The villa's name, hand-painted on a terracotta pot by the gate, had never looked so welcome.

The first thing that hits you about Villa Elefant is the quiet. Proper, thick, golden quiet, broken only by the occasional cicada and the distant clink of someone, somewhere, probably doing something more productive than we planned to. The second thing is the pool, which glittered at us like a promise. We dumped our cases in the hallway without bothering to explore the rooms properly and stood there on the terrace, grinning like idiots, already feeling the weight of London sloughing off our shoulders.

I had grand plans, of course. I always do. I'd brought three books, a sketchpad I'd used once in 2019, and a list of local restaurants compiled from approximately seventeen different websites. We were going to hike to the lighthouse at Punta Galera, apparently. We were going to explore the sunset strip, sample the nightlife, maybe even attempt a morning run along the coast path. Reader, we did approximately none of these things.

What we did instead was glorious. Mornings blurred into one long routine of strong coffee on the terrace, watching the light change over the hills while deciding whether to swim before or after breakfast. Usually both. The villa's kitchen opens straight onto the pool area, which meant I perfected the art of the extended breakfast: fresh bread from the little supermarket down in Sant Antoni, tomatoes that actually tasted of something, cheese slowly softening in the warmth. We'd read until the pages went sticky with suncream, then drift into the water when the heat became insistent.

The afternoons became even lazier. My three books got proper attention for once, not the snatched twenty minutes before sleep that passes for reading at home. I finished two and started the third twice because I kept dozing off in the hammock. My other half got through a whole series of something on her tablet, occasionally reading out facts about Ibiza's history that I would half-listen to before suggesting another swim.

We did venture out, but never far and never with urgency. The beach at Cala Gracio is barely ten minutes down the hill, a perfect little cove where we'd paddle and people-watch and congratulate ourselves on having chosen a villa with its own pool so we didn't have to fight for towel space. Some evenings we'd stroll into Sant Antoni proper for tapas, though more often we'd barbecue at the villa, eating far too late with wine from the supermarket and watching the sky turn that particular Mediterranean violet that makes you feel slightly emotional for no reason you can name.

On our last morning, packing cases we'd barely unpacked, I caught myself trying to photograph the view from the terrace one more time. My other half laughed at me, and I laughed too, because of course you can't capture that feeling of having slowed down so completely that you notice the way light moves across terracotta tiles, or how silence has a texture when you really listen for it. The angry dog and the olive grove seemed like another holiday entirely. We drove away promising ourselves we'd come back, knowing perfectly well that next time we'd probably make the same wrong turn, and not really minding at all.