I have never been so relieved to see a set of patio furniture in my entire life. There we were, four hours after leaving Gatwick, finally crawling through Valencia's outskirts with two overtired children, a boot full of suitcases, and a sat nav that had developed what I can only describe as an existential crisis. "Turn left," it insisted, as we stared at a pedestrian plaza. "Recalculating," it sulked, before suggesting we drive through what was clearly a municipal swimming pool.

The mishap, though. I must tell you about the mishap. Somewhere near Torrevieja, convinced I was being clever, I decided to override the robot voice and follow my nose. My nose, it turns out, has no qualification in Spanish geography whatsoever. We ended up on a dusty track between orange groves, the kind of place where even the goats looked surprised to see a Vauxhall Zafira. The children had moved from "Are we there yet?" to a profound silence that felt more threatening. My partner opened the window, sniffed the citrus air, and said with impressive restraint, "Perhaps the technology had a point."

Forty-five minutes of agricultural tourism later, we found the proper road. And then, miracle of miracles, there was La Mata. Not the town, though that was pleasant enough in the distance, but our actual holiday home. A proper whitewashed villa with terracotta roof tiles and a garden that looked like someone had actually tried. The key was in the lockbox exactly where the instructions said, which already felt like a minor victory given my navigational performance.

I shan't pretend the first ten minutes were graceful. I dropped the key twice. The youngest needed the toilet with an urgency that defied the laws of physics. My partner stood in the kitchen doorway and laughed at the size of the fridge, which was one of those satisfyingly chunky Spanish numbers that could hold enough groceries to survive a siege. "We'll fill it with oranges," she said. "Local ones. Not from the bootleg grove operation."

But here is where I must be slightly serious for a moment, because first impressions of a place can be noisy and chaotic and you almost miss what matters. Once the children were sorted, once the bags lay half-unpacked in that particular holiday explosion, I stood on the terrace with a glass of something cold and actually looked. The garden had proper established plants, not that sad new-build landscaping. A covered dining area meant we could eat outside without the sun punishing us, which in late July felt genuinely thoughtful. The pool was modest, nothing Instagram-flashy, but clean and inviting and entirely ours.

I thought about that wrong turn then. How stressed I had been, how I had let a machine's confusion become my own fault somehow. The orange grove track had smelled incredible, actually. The children still mention it, though they think it was intentional. "Remember when Dad did the safari?" they ask. I let them believe I planned it.

That evening we walked to the nearest shops, maybe ten minutes, bought bread still warm from the oven and tomatoes that actually tasted of something. Back at La Mata, we sat under that covered terrace until the light went strange and golden, the children finally still in the pool, and I felt that particular cottage-holiday contentment settle over me. The simple pleasure of a space that is yours temporarily, that asks nothing of you except to exist in it.

The sat nav went in the glove compartment. We walked or drove on memory after that. Sometimes we got slightly lost again, but it never mattered. Not here.