I'd never driven on the right-hand side of the road before, so naturally I chose a tiny hire car with the turning circle of a shopping trolley and a sat-nav that appeared to be having some sort of existential crisis. By the time we crawled into Cabo de Palos, my knuckles were the same colour as the whitewashed walls we kept nearly scraping, and my partner had developed a nervous habit of stamping an imaginary brake pedal into the floor mat.

The mishap came during what should have been the simplest manoeuvre of the entire journey: parking outside our holiday home. I reversed confidently into what I thought was a generous space, only to discover I'd wedged us between two identical white villas with such precision that neither of us could open our doors. We had to climb out through the boot, me with a rucksack on my head, my partner muttering something about "spectacular incompetence." An elderly chap watering his geraniums watched the entire performance without changing expression, which somehow made it worse.

The property itself, though, immediately forgave us. A compact townhouse with a small terrace and a view of the marina that made me forget I'd just performed the world's worst parallel park. Inside, everything was cool tiles and simple, unfussy furniture - the kind of place that doesn't demand anything of you. I opened the terrace doors, and that was more or less the last time I bothered with anything resembling an itinerary for the next week.

Cabo de Palos revealed itself slowly, which suited me perfectly. Mornings began with coffee on the terrace, watching the fishing boats return with their catch while I worked through a novel I'd been carrying around since January. The village has a proper working harbour, not the polished tourist version, and there's something deeply satisfying about watching men in rubber boots do something genuinely useful while you sit there achieving absolutely nothing.

The beach at Cala Reona sits just round the corner, a crescent of coarse sand backed by low cliffs. I spent whole afternoons there, swimming when the heat became insistent, then retreating under a parasol to read some more or simply watch the water. The Mediterranean does this particular blue that seems almost aggressive in its beauty, like it's showing off. I found it entirely acceptable to let it.

For lunch, we'd wander to the port where several unpretentious restaurants serve the morning's catch with little more than lemon and olive oil. I ate grilled prawns that still tasted of the sea, and squid so fresh it practically introduced itself. There was no rush, no booking required, just the slow rhythm of Spanish afternoon unfolding around us.

I did manage one walk to the lighthouse at the point, though "walk" rather overstates the effort involved. It's a gentle stroll along the promenade, perhaps twenty minutes, ending at a nineteenth-century tower that looks out across the Mar Menor and the open Mediterranean beyond. I sat on the rocks nearby and watched a heron stand motionless in the shallows, apparently as committed to idleness as I was.

The evenings surprised me. Cabo de Palos isn't a place that roars into nightlife; instead, the port fills with locals strolling, children on bicycles, old couples holding hands. We joined this procession most nights, stopping for a beer or a glass of surprisingly decent local wine, eating tapas when hunger eventually announced itself. The sun set behind the hills in that prolonged, theatrical way that southern Spain specialises in, and I felt something in my shoulders release that I hadn't realised I'd been holding.

By the end, I understood something about holidays I'd somehow forgotten. The drive back to the airport, me still gripping the wheel too tightly, felt different somehow. I'd done remarkably little, seen almost nothing famous, collected no stories worth telling at dinner parties. And yet sitting in that departure lounge, slightly sunburned and thoroughly idle, I couldn't remember feeling so genuinely restored.