I have never been so relieved to see a set of house keys in a plastic box as I was after our journey to Cuaquis in Porto Cristo. The flight into Palma had been straightforward enough, and the hire car pick-up went without a hitch, which in itself should have set alarm bells ringing. Something always goes wrong on our family holidays. Always.

This time it was the sat-nav. Or rather, it was me and the sat-nav in some dreadful partnership of incompetence. I had punched in the address confidently at the airport, ignoring my wife's suggestion to double-check the postcode. Forty minutes later we were winding through lanes near Manacor that grew progressively narrower and more agricultural. The children had stopped asking "are we there yet" and moved on to the far more ominous "where even is this?" My son spotted a goat giving us what I can only describe as a pitying look.

The sat-nav announced we had arrived at our destination. We were in a farmyard. A very nice farmyard, admittedly, with excellent views of somebody's tractor collection, but not the stone cottage with pool and terrace that the website had promised. I got out to ask directions from a man who was clearly wondering why a middle-aged bloke in Crocs was trespassing among his lemon trees. My Spanish extends to ordering beer and apologising, so I did both simultaneously while waving my phone about like a semaphore enthusiast.

Twenty minutes of gesturing and goodwill later, we found the actual Cuaquis. It sits on the edge of Porto Cristo, that lovely little town on Majorca's east coast, tucked away just enough to feel private without being remote. The stone walls were exactly the warm honey colour they looked online, and there was the terrace with its sun loungers, and there was the pool glinting in the afternoon light. My daughter actually cheered. I tried to look as though I had planned the scenic detour.

Stepping inside, the place had that immediate sense of rightness you sometimes get with holiday lets. Terracotta floors, wooden beams, furniture that looked lived-in rather than staged for photographs. The kitchen opened onto a dining area with doors to the terrace, and I could already picture evenings with the barbecue going and glasses of local wine. My wife gave me that look, the one that says she is choosing not to mention the sat-nav incident in exchange for my eternal gratitude.

The children vanished to claim bedrooms, which left me to unpack and perform my traditional holiday ritual of working out how the oven works. Every cottage has its quirks. This one had a coffee machine that required what felt like an engineering degree and a shower with temperature control that seemed to operate on pure whim. I made a mental note to let the others shower first and learn from their suffering.

By late afternoon we were installed by the pool, and I finally allowed myself that beer I had been practising my Spanish for. Porto Cristo stretched below us, the harbour just visible, and beyond it the Mediterranean doing its usual excellent job of looking blue and inviting. The goat encounter already felt like it belonged to another holiday entirely.

That first evening we walked down to the town for pizza, too tired to attempt the barbecue. The harbour front was lively without being overwhelming, families strolling, fishing boats bobbing at their moorings. We ate too much, laughed about my navigation skills, and agreed that sometimes the wrong turn makes the right destination feel even better. I still checked the route home three times though. Some lessons sink in slowly.