I should have known the holiday was going to be eventful when I tried to unlock the hire car with the key fob from my last trip to Portugal. Three minutes of frantic button pressing in the Palma airport car park, a small queue forming behind me, and one deeply unimpressed man in a hi-vis vest later, I finally accepted that Avis had given me a different vehicle entirely. Not my finest moment, but at least it set the tone for a week where I would embrace being slightly out of my depth.

The drive east from Palma in late October felt like being let in on a secret. The summer crowds had thinned to almost nothing, and the motorway was so quiet I kept checking I had not missed some kind of road closure. The almond trees were already dropping their leaves, leaving skeletal branches against a sky that somehow managed to be both pale and intensely blue at the same time. I had the windows down, which was probably optimistic given the nip in the air, but I was determined to get my money's worth from the convertible I had accidentally paid extra for.

Son Macia announced itself with a scattering of stone houses and a sudden view of the countryside that made me pull over, hazard lights blinking, just to stare. The fields were golden and stubbled from the autumn harvest, and the Tramuntana mountains sat hazy in the distance like a painted backdrop. It was the kind of landscape that makes you feel simultaneously peaceful and vaguely guilty about your usual life spent staring at screens.

Finding Paraiso required some faith in rural road signage and a brief, unscheduled tour of a farm track that definitely was not on the official route. I arrived at the villa with a coating of dust on the bonnet and a newfound respect for people who navigate without sat nav. The first thing that struck me was the stillness. Not silence exactly, because there were birds and distant tractors and the occasional dog, but a kind of settled quiet that felt almost physical after the chaos of the airport.

The pool was covered, which I had expected for the time of year, but the terrace still caught the afternoon sun in a way that demanded I sit down immediately with a cup of tea. I did not move for an hour. The light was doing that golden autumn thing, long and slanted and slightly melancholy, turning the stone walls of the villa honey-coloured. I found myself thinking about how greedy we are with summer, how we insist on travelling when everything is at maximum intensity, when really this felt like the better deal. The trade-off for cooler evenings and the occasional need for a jumper was space, and peace, and the sense that the place was breathing out after a busy season.

By six o'clock the temperature had dropped sharply enough to send me hunting for the heating controls, and I cooked dinner with the kitchen door closed for the first time. The darkness outside felt complete, not the half-dark of a British autumn but something deeper, starrier, more absolute. I ate slightly too much bread and cheese and told myself this was what holidays were for.

That first evening set the pattern. Mornings bright and brisk enough for proper walks through the lanes, afternoons warm enough to read outside in a T-shirt if you found the right spot, evenings that demanded layers and early nights. The season shaped everything, from the closed cafes in nearby villages to the smell of woodsmoke that drifted across from somewhere in the valley. It was not the Majorca of postcards and beach clubs. It was something quieter, more particular, and I suspect rather more honest.

I went to bed that first night slightly sunburned across the nose, which felt like a personal failing given the time of year, and slept better than I had in months.