I have never been more grateful for a sat nav than I was driving into Cehegin, though I will admit it tried to murder my marriage approximately three times before we even found the cottage. My wife, Sarah, had printed directions as backup because she does not trust technology, and I had the phone mounted on the dashboard because I do not trust Sarah's handwriting. Somewhere near the edge of town, both systems simultaneously decided the cottage existed in a dimension between a dry riverbed and somebody's olive grove. We circled the same roundabout four times. The children stopped asking if we were there yet and simply stared out the windows in that hollow way children do when they have accepted their fate.

The mishap, though. I need to tell you about the mishap. We finally spotted the lane, rattled down it in our hire car, and I leaped out triumphantly to open the gate. In my enthusiasm, I failed to notice the low stone wall. My foot found a loose rock, my dignity found the gravel, and the bottle of cava I had been clutching for our arrival found the air in a perfect arc before shattering against a terracotta pot. Sarah did not laugh. She did this thing where she looks at me silently for a very long moment, then walks away. The children laughed. The neighbours, an elderly couple watering their geraniums, definitely laughed. I sat in the gravel for a moment, contemplating my life choices, the fragility of glassware, and whether I could pass this off as some sort of Spanish tradition.

The cottage itself saved everything. It is the sort of place that makes you forgive yourself for being an idiot. Whitewashed walls, wooden beams you would bump your head on if you were me, which apparently I am. A small pool glinting in the afternoon light, nothing fancy, just enough for the kids to cannonball into while Sarah and I unpacked and I nursed my grazed knee. The kitchen opened onto a covered terrace with a barbecue that looked like it had seen decades of family holidays, which I found enormously comforting. There is something about a well-used barbecue. It suggests other people have also burned sausages here. You are part of a lineage.

Cehegin is not a place that shouts at you. It murmurs. The town centre sits up on the hill, a proper Spanish jumble of narrow streets and unexpected squares, and we wandered up there the first evening still slightly dazed from travel. We found a tiny bar where the owner seemed genuinely surprised to see tourists, which I always take as a good sign. He brought us tapas without us asking, little dishes of marinated anchovies and grilled peppers, and the children ate patatas bravas with the focused concentration they usually reserve for screens. Sarah and I shared a carafe of local wine that cost roughly what a London coffee does, and I caught her looking at me with actual fondness again, the cava incident apparently forgiven or at least filed under expected behaviour.

That first night, we sat on the terrace after the children finally collapsed. The air smelled of jasmine and woodsmoke from somebody else's dinner. A gecko appeared on the wall, frozen in the lamplight, and we watched it for ages without speaking. I thought about how I had imagined this moment during the greyest parts of winter, and how reality rarely matches imagination, but this did. This matched. Even the gravel in my palm from where I fell, even the absence of celebratory cava. Especially those things, maybe. They made it ours.

I still have a faint scar on my knee. Sarah calls it my Cehegin tattoo. I rather like that.