I have never been so grateful for a sat nav in my life, and I have never wanted to throw one out of a moving vehicle quite so badly either. We had landed at Palma in late October, collected our hire car, and set off for Es Moli Des Trenc with the sort of blind optimism that only a person who has never driven Mallorca's rural lanes can possess. The almond trees were shedding their last leaves, the light had that honeyed quality you only get in autumn, and I was thoroughly convinced we would find our finca with minimal fuss.

We did not find it with minimal fuss.

The sat nav decided that what our compact Fiat really needed was an agricultural track intended for tractors and the occasional determined goat. My partner, who had unwisely let me navigate, gripped the door handle as branches scraped the paintwork and I developed a nervous laugh that I am not proud of. We emerged twenty minutes later into someone's olive grove, where a very patient farmer pointed us back toward civilisation with gestures that needed no translation. I waved apologetically and reversed with the dignity of a person who absolutely knew where they were going.

By the time we actually reached Es Moli Des Trenc, the afternoon sun was already sliding low across the fields, and the stone walls of the converted mill were glowing amber against the darkening green of the surrounding countryside. October in Mallorca is not the Mallorca of postcards, all crowded beaches and blazing heat. It is something far better, though I did not know it yet. The air carried a faint chill that made you grateful for a jumper, and the silence was profound in that way that only comes when the summer crowds have gone home and the island breathes again.

The owner met us at the gate, unfazed by our late arrival and presumably accustomed to guests who have argued with technology. She showed us round the finca with the easy pride of someone who knows exactly what they have. The place had clearly been a working mill once, and they had kept the character intact: thick stone walls, wooden beams, terracotta floors that stayed cool even as the evenings drew in. I ran my hand along a windowsill and found it faintly warm from the day's sun, a small pleasure that autumn seems to magnify somehow.

What struck me immediately was how the season shaped everything. The swimming pool, still usable if you were determined and slightly masochistic, sat there with a cover half-pulled back, leaves skittering across the terrace whenever the breeze picked up. In July this would have been the centre of everything, shrieking children and inflatables and the smell of coconut sunscreen. Now it felt almost contemplative, a mirror for the sky rather than a playground. I found myself sitting beside it that first evening with a glass of local red, watching the light fade and feeling slightly smug about our timing.

The kitchen had been stocked with basics, including olive oil from a nearby cooperative and bread that was still warm. We made a simple supper and ate outside under a blanket, which sounds romantic and was, though mostly I remember my nose getting cold and refusing to admit it. The owner had left a small wood burner ready laid, and I felt an almost childish excitement at the prospect of lighting it. There is something about October evenings in Mallorca that demands a fire, that makes the flicker of flames feel necessary rather than merely pleasant.

I woke early the next morning, confused by the silence after London, and found mist lying low across the fields. The almond trees stood grey and skeletal, waiting for spring, and somewhere a dog barked with the lazy irregularity of a creature with nowhere particular to be. I made coffee and stood on the terrace in my dressing gown, feeling the chill through the cotton, watching the sun burn through the haze and turn everything golden again.

That first morning set the pattern for the days that followed. We walked the lanes between the fincas, meeting no one, gathering wild fennel that grew profusely at the field edges and smelled of aniseed when crushed. The beaches at Es Trenc, famous for their turquoise shallows and Caribbean sand, were almost empty. A few dog walkers, the occasional serious swimmer in a wetsuit, but none of the summer chaos. The water was clear and cold, and I paddled briefly before retreating with the sort of yelp that my partner found hilarious.

I had worried that coming in autumn might feel like catching Mallorca on the downswing, all the good stuff finished for another year. Instead it felt like being let in on a secret. The restaurants in nearby Sa Rapita and Colonia de Sant Jordi were still open, catering to locals and the occasional visitor with time to spare. We ate grilled sobrasada and honey one evening, the cured sausage rich and smoky, and the waiter spent ten minutes explaining the almond harvest to us with the enthusiasm of a man who genuinely loved his subject. In summer he would have had no time for such conversation.

There was a small market in Campos one morning, more root vegetables and preserved goods than the tourist trinkets of high season. I bought a jar of fig jam from a woman who told me, in rapid Mallorquin that I mostly failed to follow, that her grandmother's recipe demanded patience and late-season fruit. I understood enough to nod in the right places and feel briefly connected to something older than my usual supermarket existence.

By our final evening, I had grown almost proprietorial about the finca, as if a week of autumn light had given me some claim to it. I lit the wood burner with the confidence of experience now, and we sat with the doors open to the terrace, listening to the first owls. The air smelled of woodsmoke and distant rain, that particular autumn promise that never quite arrived but lingered as possibility.

I thought about our arrival, the sat nav debacle, the farmer's patient directions. It seemed fitting somehow that we had found the place through minor confusion and stubborn persistence. Autumn Mallorca does not hand itself to you easily; it requires a little effort, a willingness to accept that the pool might be too cold and the evenings too chilly for shorts. The reward is a kind of intimacy with the island that summer visitors, for all their sunburn and sangria, never quite achieve.

We left on a morning when the mist was thicker than usual, the finca's stone walls weeping slightly with condensation. I packed the fig jam carefully and took one last walk round the garden, where winter vegetables were already going in and the last tomatoes hung wrinkled and sweet on their vines. The season had shaped everything, I realised, had given our holiday its particular texture of quiet and slight hardship and unexpected warmth.

I still have the sat nav. I have not used it since.