The flight from Gatwick had been mercifully short, but the hire car queue at Palma airport moved with all the urgency of a sloth on a sun lounger. By the time I finally reached Galeria Verde in Betlem, it was pushing half past three in the afternoon and I had committed that classic British holiday blunder: arriving in late September convinced I was chasing summer, only to discover that Majorca's autumn had other ideas.

I had packed for blazing heat. Three pairs of shorts, a stack of t-shirts, one token jumper "just in case." The jumper stayed buried in my suitcase for the first two hours while I stubbornly sat on the terrace in a vest top, pretending my teeth weren't chattering. The seasonal shift had already settled over the little hamlet of Betlem, and there I was, treating thirty degrees in my imagination like a binding contract.

The property itself, when I finally stopped shivering long enough to appreciate it, revealed itself slowly in that soft autumn light. The terrace at Galeria Verde looks out towards the Badia d'Alcudia, and in late September the afternoon sun sits lower, stretching everything into long gold shapes rather than the white glare of high summer. The pool, still swimmable if you're determined or Welsh, reflected a sky that seemed somehow higher than at home, clearer in that particular Mediterranean way that makes British skies feel permanently apologetic.

My first evening taught me the real rhythm of the place. In July, Betlem empties as people head for beaches and late dinners. In September, the village seems to breathe inwards. I walked down to the little cove as the light faded, and found locals gathering fallen figs from trees that overhang the lanes. One elderly man wordlessly handed me one, and I stood there on the path, juice running down my wrist, understanding something about seasonal travel that my summer-brain had never quite grasped. The fig was overripe, almost alcoholic, the taste of a specific week that would pass in days.

Back at the house, I finally surrendered and dug out that jumper. The terrace became usable again. I sat out with a bottle of local red, watching the last warmth leak from the stone walls as the cicadas gave their final performance of the year. Their sound is different in autumn somehow, more intermittent, as if even they are checking their watches.

The next morning brought proper revelation. I woke to grey skies and a fine drizzle, and my immediate instinct was British gloom. But the seasonal timing meant the Llevant Natural Park trails, accessible from just up the road, were virtually empty. I walked for two hours through pines that smelled of resin and recent rain, meeting precisely one other person. In August, I'd have been queueing behind German hiking groups and dodging mountain bikes. The autumn weather, capricious and mild, had gifted me solitude that peak season simply cannot buy.

By afternoon the sun returned, and I understood the peculiar generosity of a September stay. The days still warm enough for swimming, the evenings cool enough for sleeping properly. The local restaurants in nearby Arta, just a few miles inland, still open but no longer requiring the strategic reservations of midsummer. I ate paella on a terrace with six other tables, not sixty, and the waiter had time to explain which fish had come in that morning.

My small mishap, that under-packing comedy, became the key that unlocked the whole week. Chasing eternal summer is a British disease, and Majorca in autumn gently cures it. You learn to carry a layer, to watch the light change, to accept that a cloudy morning might become a perfect afternoon, or might not, and either way the figs are falling and the village is quietly, determinedly itself.

I left with a suntan weaker than planned but a holiday that felt properly inhabited, seasonal, real. The jumper got more wear than anything else I brought. I count that as wisdom hard-won.