I should have known the holiday was going to be eventful when I confidently strode up to what I thought was our hire car at Palma airport, chucked my suitcase in the boot, and only realised my mistake when a bewildered German tourist tapped on the window holding his key fob. Same model, same colour, parked two spaces away from ours. My wife has still not let this go, and we have been here three days.

The drive to Es Pas in Vallgornera took about forty minutes, winding through pine-scented hills and past those absurdly picturesque stone villages that make you wonder why anyone bothers with the Cotswolds. I had the windows down, some terrible Spanish pop radio blaring, and a growing sense that we might actually pull off a proper family holiday without disaster. The sat-nav betrayed us only once, sending us down a lane barely wide enough for a scooter, where I had to reverse two hundred metres while a local farmer watched with the patient amusement of someone who has seen this exact scene a thousand times.

Es Pas itself sits tucked away in a quiet corner of Vallgornera, a proper cottage-style finca with thick stone walls and terracotta tiles that look like they have been baking in the Mallorcan sun since before package holidays existed. The key was exactly where the owner said it would be, which felt like a small miracle given my track record. I fumbled with the lock, dramatic suitcase still wedged in the wrong car at the airport playing on my mind, and then we stepped inside.

The first thing that hits you is the coolness. Those old walls know something about insulation that modern builders have apparently forgotten. The living room opens onto a covered terrace where a wooden table sits waiting for long lunches, and beyond that, a garden thick with bougainvillea and the kind of relaxed neglect that says someone actually lives here occasionally rather than just sanitising it between tourist rotations. My daughter immediately claimed the hammock. My son disappeared to investigate the barbecue with the focused attention of a twelve-year-old who has recently discovered an interest in setting things on fire responsibly.

I will be honest, my first thought was whether we would actually leave the property much at all. The pool is not one of those sterile turquoise rectangles you see in resort brochures. It is smaller, irregular, surrounded by terracotta pots and a lemon tree that drops fruit with satisfying plops throughout the day. The water was slightly too cold when we arrived, which meant I got to perform my traditional dad routine of exaggerated shivering and dramatic entry while my children watched with the contempt only offspring can muster.

Vallgornera itself is barely a village, more a scattering of houses and a small shop where I now buy my morning bread. Cala Pi beach is close enough, a cove with cliffs that look like they have been borrowed from a Mediterranean postcard, but we have not made it there yet. There is something about this place that slows you down deliberately, almost stubbornly. The first evening, we cooked pasta on the hob that took approximately three times longer than it should have, drank wine from plastic cups because I could not find the proper ones, and watched geckos dart across the terrace walls as the sky turned that particular Mallorcan pink.

I keep thinking about that wrong car at the airport. It is funny now, mostly, though I suspect it will become family legend. But sitting here on the terrace with my coffee going cold and nowhere particular to be, I wonder if that moment of confusion was somehow fitting. We are not very good at doing nothing, my family. We plan and schedule and optimise. This place does not really allow for that. The Wi-Fi works intermittently. The pool filter makes a noise like a disgruntled cat. The nearest anything is a deliberate walk away.

I think that is rather the point. We needed to get slightly lost, to open the wrong boot, to let dinner take forever. The cottage does not hurry you. It has seen families like ours before, I suspect, full of good intentions and misplaced energy, and it knows exactly how long it takes to wear us down into something resembling relaxation.

Tomorrow we might walk to the beach. Or we might not. The lemons are falling, the hammock is occupied, and I have a barbecue to master. Slowly.