I should have known the holiday was going to be memorable when I missed the turning for Cabanes twice in the space of twenty minutes. There I was, squinting at my phone with that particular expression of someone who has confidently ignored a sat nav, crawling past orange groves and wondering if I had somehow driven into a painting rather than the Valencian countryside. The second time I found myself passing the same cheerful old man on a scooter, he actually waved. I like to think it was with sympathy rather than mockery.

The property, when I finally arrived, revealed itself down a dusty track that made my little hire car sound like it was chewing gravel. A Cabanes, which I had been pronouncing wrong in my head for weeks, turned out to be one of those traditional Valencian farmhouses that makes you feel immediately underdressed for your own life. Thick whitewashed walls, terracotta tiles, a heavy wooden door that required a proper shoulder-shove to open. I stood in the courtyard with my suitcase and a bag of emergency supermarket provisions, already sweating pleasantly in the late afternoon sun, and felt something in my shoulders drop that I had not realised I was holding.

The first evening set the tone for everything that followed. I unpacked with the urgency of a sloth, found a hammock strung between two lemon trees, and lay there with a book I had been meaning to read for eighteen months. Every so often a breeze would come through carrying the smell of jasmine and dry earth, and I would remember to turn a page. That was the extent of my ambition. The book progressed slowly. I progressed slowly. It felt like an achievement.

Mornings became a ritual of deliberate unhurriedness. I would wander to the tiny village shop for bread still warm from the oven, stopping to watch a tortoise that appeared to live in the hedge near the turning. I named him Fernando. Our relationship was based on mutual respect and my willingness to step around him. Back at the house, breakfast stretched across hours, coffee going cold while I watched swallows darting over the pool and considered whether I might swim later. Usually I did, eventually, when the heat became persuasive enough to overcome the effort of standing up.

The local area rewarded this pace of living. I walked to Cabanes proper one afternoon, perhaps twenty minutes through lanes shaded by ancient carob trees, and found a village square where old men played cards with the solemn concentration of chess grandmasters. I ordered a horchata, that curious Valencian drink made from tiger nuts, and sipped it watching them, understanding nothing of the game and not minding at all. Another day I drove the short distance to the beach at Torre la Sal, though "drove" suggests more purpose than I felt. Mostly I sat on the terrace with my feet up, reading the same paragraph repeatedly because the warmth on my eyelids kept winning.

There was a moment, perhaps day four, when I noticed I had not checked my phone in hours and felt no anxiety about this. The realisation itself felt like a small victory, though I immediately undermined it by thinking how I might mention it casually to friends back home. Even my self-reflection, I reflected, had become lazy and circular, which seemed entirely appropriate.

The tortoise, I decided, had the right philosophy all along. Fernando would understand.