I have never been so grateful for air conditioning in my entire life. That is the first thing I need to say about arriving at our villa in Aguilas last August. The second thing is that I managed to pack three left flip-flops and no right ones, which I discovered approximately four hours into our drive from Alicante airport when we stopped at a petrol station somewhere near the Mar Menor. My partner just looked at me, sighed in that particular way he has, and said nothing. He did not need to. I was already Googling shoe shops in Aguilas with one hand and eating a warm croissant with the other.

The journey itself had been mostly painless, if you ignore my footwear situation and the fact that our hire car's sat-nav seemed personally offended by the AP-7 motorway. It kept trying to send us inland through what I can only describe as very determined-looking lemon groves. We stuck to the coast road in the end, winding down through Lorca and then along to Aguilas, and I am glad we did. The landscape shifts from dusty brown hills to sudden flashes of blue sea, and even in the height of summer with the heat haze shimmering off everything, there is something properly dramatic about that coastline.

By the time we pulled up to the villa, it was past two in the afternoon and the sun was doing that thing where it feels personally aggressive. You know the kind of heat I mean. The sort that makes you wonder if you have somehow offended the weather gods. I stepped out of the car and immediately felt my hair attempt to become one with my face. My partner, who had sensibly worn a hat, began unloading cases with the grim determination of someone who knew we had about three minutes before the tarmac started claiming souls.

The villa itself was a proper little sanctuary though. White walls, terracotta tiles, a pool that looked so inviting I nearly climbed in with my clothes still on. The seasonal timing meant everything was in full, exuberant bloom in the garden, though "bloom" feels too gentle a word. The bougainvillea was basically staging a hostile takeover of the back wall. I have never seen that particular shade of magenta look quite so triumphant. The olive trees were doing their ancient, gnarled thing in the corner, offering patches of actual shade that felt like genuine luxury.

Here is where I need to be slightly honest with myself. I am someone who normally holidays in May or September. I am a shoulder-season person. I like mild temperatures and the smugness of avoiding crowds. August in southern Spain was my partner's idea, and I had gone along with it making all the usual noises about "experiencing the authentic heat" and "proper summer." Standing there in that courtyard, sweat already pooling in places I did not know could sweat, I had a moment of genuine self-reflection. Was I, in fact, a bit of a weather wimp? Had years of British drizzle ruined me for proper Mediterranean summer? The bougainvillea seemed to judge me silently.

The afternoon siesta became our immediate survival strategy. The villa's thick walls and shutters, clearly designed by people who understood August in Murcia, created a cave-like coolness that felt almost miraculous. We slept for two hours, woke disoriented and slightly guilty, then drifted out to the pool as the light began to soften. That golden hour, when the worst of the heat retreats and the sea breeze finally stirs, that was when I understood why people do this. The town below us was quiet, resting after its own siesta, and everything felt still and suspended.

We walked down to the nearest beach that evening, me in my newly purchased flip-flops from a shop near the port that also sold fishing nets and mysterious plastic toys. The water was warm as bathwater, which I found slightly unnerving at first, then completely wonderful. Children were still playing at the shoreline in that endless way children do when daylight stretches late into evening. The season had brought families and a particular energy, a hum of late dinners and ice creams and the clatter of plates from beachside restaurants just opening for the evening service.

I waded in up to my knees and watched the last of the sun hit the castle on the headland. My three left flip-flops sat in a bin somewhere, a small sacrifice to the gods of poor packing. The heat had humbled me slightly, forced a slower pace, made me surrender to rhythms I normally resist. That is what I keep thinking about now, back in grey Britain. Not the temperature itself, but how the season demanded something from us, and what we got back when we finally stopped fighting it.