I have never been so relieved to see a washing machine in my life. Four hours earlier, I had been standing in Gatwick's departures lounge, smugly sipping an overpriced flat white and congratulating myself on travelling light. One small carry-on, I told my partner. Who needs checked baggage for a week in Majorca? I am a minimalist genius.

The mishap, because there is always one, struck somewhere over the Pyrenees. Turbulence jolted my orange juice directly into my lap, and somehow, through what I can only describe as liquid witchcraft, the splash defied gravity and soaked the entire bottom half of my rucksack. My three pairs of shorts, four t-shirts, and one ambitious linen shirt emerged at Palma airport looking like I had swum across from Sussex. My partner, whose own bag remained suspiciously pristine, found this hilarious for approximately six seconds. Then she remembered we had no car, a bus to catch, and a walk from Alcudia's old town to Can Ferrer that Google Maps optimistically described as "twelve minutes."

It was twenty-five minutes in thirty-degree heat, me clutching a plastic bag of damp clothing like a particularly sad laundry-themed carnival prize, my flip-flops making that distinctive squelch-thwack rhythm that announces a man who has made poor life choices to the entire street.

But then we turned onto the lane, and the squelching stopped mattering.

Can Ferrer sits in that quietly stubborn way old Mallorcan houses do, all honey-coloured stone and green shutters that have weathered decades of August afternoons. The garden was already doing that thing where bougainvillea throws itself everywhere with theatrical abandon, and somewhere behind the walls, I could hear a fountain doing proper fountain business, not the sad trickle you get in hotel lobbies. Our host appeared with keys and what I can only describe as the correct amount of chat: friendly without requiring my life story, which was fortunate given my current aroma of fermented citrus.

The interior was cooler than outside by a genuinely shocking margin. Thick walls, I later learned, built back when air conditioning meant "wait until October." The kitchen had actual terracotta tiles, the slightly uneven kind that make you feel like you have wandered into someone's grandmother's house rather than a holiday let. I spotted the washing machine through a doorway and may have made an involuntary noise of spiritual relief.

We had planned, overenthusiastically, to dump bags and immediately hike the coastal path toward Coll Baix, that crescent of pebbled beach tucked beneath cliffs north of Alcudia. The guidebook promised dramatic views, wild rosemary, the possibility of seeing ospreys. I had packed trail shoes specifically. I had researched this.

Instead, we stood on the terrace and the weather simply refused to cooperate with ambition. Not rain, nothing so dramatic. Just heat that had shifted from "pleasantly warm" to "possibly hostile," the kind that makes exposed coastal walking feel less like adventure and more like a poorly conceived endurance event. The sky had turned that particular bleached white that Mediterranean skies do when they are holding something back, and the breeze from the bay felt like someone opening an oven door.

My freshly washed clothes would not dry in this, I realised. Nothing would dry in this. The trail could wait.

We adapted, as you do when the island gently suggests you are being an idiot. The afternoon became a slow wander through Alcudia's medieval streets instead, sticking to shade, stopping for horchata that tasted of tiger nuts and childhood summers I never actually had. We walked the Roman walls as the light softened, the stone still warm but no longer aggressive, and I found myself oddly grateful for the orange juice incident, for the enforced slowing down. Without it, I would have charged off to Coll Baix, ticked the box, missed the town entirely.

The next morning, proper coastal walking resumed. The heat had broken slightly, or perhaps I had simply adjusted my expectations. We set off early, properly early, with water and sensible hats and none of my previous swagger. The path from Alcanada toward the nature reserve delivered everything the guidebook had promised: pine needles underfoot releasing that sharp resin smell, sudden glimpses of turquoise through gaps in the trees, the odd moment where the trail narrowed and you had to concentrate on where you placed your feet rather than the view.

I thought about that washing machine, working through the night in its small utility room. I thought about how holidays rarely survive first contact with plans, and how this is usually the point of them. Can Ferrer had already become the place where I sat on that terrace in the evenings, where the stone stayed cool against my back, where I stopped trying to optimise every hour and started noticing things instead: the gecko on the wall, the way the light moved across the courtyard, the particular silence of a town that has not yet geared up for the day's tourists.

We did reach Coll Baix eventually, on our third attempt, early enough that we had the beach to ourselves for an hour. The pebbles were already warming, the water that impossible clear blue that makes you suspicious of photographs until you see it yourself. I swam out far enough to turn and look back at the cliffs, at the path we had taken, at the whole ridiculous journey from orange juice disaster to this.

My shorts were still slightly damp from that first wash, because of course they were. I had packed three pairs and managed, through various mishaps, to rotate through all of them with military inefficiency. Standing there in the Mediterranean, treading water, I decided this was probably the appropriate condition for the entire week. Slightly damp, slightly behind schedule, considerably happier than planned.

We walked back the longer way, through the pines, as the morning properly heated up and the trail started filling with people who had made the sensible decision to start even earlier than us. My trail shoes were properly broken in now, my shoulders carrying the faint pink of someone who had applied sunscreen with British optimism rather than Mediterranean thoroughness.

Can Ferrer waited, with its thick walls and its fountain and its washing machine that had, by this point, become something of a personal hero. I would load it again that evening, with salt-water shorts and sweat-dried t-shirts, and it would chug through another cycle while we sat outside with wine and olives and the particular satisfaction of legs that have done proper work in good air.

That is the thing about warm-weather walking, I think, as I sit here now trying to remember which of my sun-faded photographs goes where. The weather changes your plans, or your own stupidity does, or some combination of both, and the holiday becomes whatever you manage instead. I managed slow mornings and early starts and a body of water that never stopped feeling like a reward. I managed to stop caring about damp clothes and efficient itineraries. I managed, mostly, to keep moving when it made sense and to stop when it did not, which is harder than it sounds and easier than I expected, once the island convinced me to try.