I should have known the Sat Nav was up to no good the moment it tried to send me through what looked like someone's allotment. There I was, crawling along a dirt track outside Yecla, convinced I was pioneering a new route to Murcia, when a chap on a moped pulled up alongside and tapped my window. Turned out I was trespassing through his uncle's vineyard. "GPS," I said, pointing helplessly at the dashboard. He nodded with the weary sympathy of a man who had rescued dozens of lost Brits before me, then led me back to civilisation with a friendly wave at every junction. I never did catch his name, but his uncle apparently still tells the story at family dinners.

The property itself materialised down a lane of almond trees, all whitewashed walls and terracotta pots exactly as promised. My first attempt at the key safe would have embarrassed a safecracker. I was still fumbling when Maria from next door appeared, drying her hands on a tea towel, and talked me through it in patient Spanish that somehow I mostly understood. She'd lived there forty years, she told me, and had watched every holidaymaker struggle with that same lock. "Technology," she said, with a shrug that transcended language.

The pool was the first thing I tested, naturally. Within minutes, her husband Pepe wandered over with two glasses of something cold and amber-coloured. Homemade liqueur, it turned out, made from herbs he foraged himself. "Medicinal," he insisted, though his grin suggested otherwise. We sat on my terrace as the afternoon heat softened, and he told me about Yecla's wine country in broken English far better than my Spanish. Every third sentence, he'd pause to check I'd understood, then carry on with renewed determination when I clearly hadn't.

That evening I walked into town for provisions and found myself adopted by a group of pensioners at the only open supermarket. They were debating the merits of various hams with the passion other people reserve for football, and somehow I ended up with three different recommendations pressed into my hands, plus an invitation to someone's grandson's christening that I politely deferred. The butcher, Manuel, insisted on slicing me extra chorizo "for the journey home," though my flat was five minutes away. He'd worked there thirty-two years, he told me, and could remember when the town had one car and seventeen donkeys.

Back at the property, Maria appeared again with a bowl of gazpacho, "because you look like you need feeding." I hadn't the heart to mention my three types of ham. We sat watching swallows dart across the darkening sky, and she told me about her children in Madrid, how she couldn't bear the city herself, how the silence here sometimes spoke louder than noise. I found myself admitting I'd come to escape decisions back home, which surprised us both. She patted my hand and said something I think meant that stillness wasn't the same as standing still.

The next morning, Pepe knocked to ask if I wanted to see his herb garden. I spent two hours learning plants I'd never heard of, their names slipping through my memory like water, while he spoke of rainfall and soil with the tenderness most people reserve for lovers. He gave me cuttings wrapped in damp newspaper, instructions I couldn't read, and a promise they'd survive if I talked to them daily.

I never did make it to the famous bodegas or the historic sites. Instead I collected conversations like souvenirs, each one slightly altering my shape, until by the end I felt less like a visitor and more like someone the town had gently claimed for its own.