I have never been a natural navigator, so it will surprise absolutely no one that my first attempt to find Les Coves de Vinroma ended with me parked outside someone's olive grove, wondering why their cat looked so judgemental. The satnav had cheerfully announced we had arrived, and I had believed it. A farmer in a faded blue shirt eventually pointed me back toward the village proper, chuckling in that universal way that needs no translation. I drove the last few minutes with my dignity in tatters and the windows down, letting the warm Valencian air pretend to soothe my ego.

The approach to the property itself made up for everything. Les Coves de Vinroma sits among rolling countryside that looks almost suspiciously picturesque, as if someone has gone overboard with the Mediterranean holiday brochure settings. The house is a traditional stone building with terracotta roof tiles and wooden shutters that have clearly weathered many summers. My first thought was that it looked exactly like the sort of place where you are supposed to slow down, whether you planned to or not.

Stepping inside, the coolness hit me immediately. Thick stone walls doing their ancient work against the afternoon heat. The interior is simple and unpretentious, tiled floors that echo slightly underfoot, wooden beams overhead, furniture that prioritises comfort over style in the best possible way. I dumped my bags with the theatrical exhaustion of someone who has done almost nothing strenuous and wandered straight out to the terrace.

Here is where I properly stopped. The terrace wraps around with views across olive groves and distant hills, and someone had left a hammock strung between two trees that I immediately decided was my new permanent address. A small pool glinted in the corner, not one of those ridiculous infinity situations that demands Instagram performance, just a proper modest rectangle of water for floating in when the heat builds. I lowered myself into a weathered wooden chair and discovered that my legs had no intention of moving again that afternoon.

The village of Les Coves de Vinroma itself is barely a stroll away, though stroll is perhaps too energetic a word for my pace. I wandered over the next morning in search of bread and basic supplies, finding a small shop where the owner seemed genuinely surprised that I attempted my dreadful Spanish rather than pointing and miming. I bought a loaf that was still warm, some local cheese, tomatoes that actually tasted of something, and a bottle of wine for embarrassing money. The return journey took forty minutes because I kept stopping to watch a lizard sunning itself on a wall, then to examine some flowering shrub I could not identify, then simply because the light had changed and the shadows looked worth appreciating.

My days quickly settled into a rhythm that would horrify my usual self. Mornings began slowly, coffee on the terrace while the air was still fresh enough to need a light jumper. I had brought three books and made serious inroads into all of them, reading in the hammock until my neck protested, then moving to a sun lounger until the heat suggested the pool, then floating there until hunger drove me back to the terrace for lunch. The afternoons were for even less, sometimes a doze, sometimes just watching swallows dart across the sky, sometimes walking to the edge of the property to look at the same view from a slightly different angle.

I did explore locally, but never with any urgency. The nearby town of Albocasser sits about four miles away and provided a pleasant afternoon of wandering narrow streets and sitting in a small plaza with an excellent coffee. The coastline at Alcossebre is within reach if you want beaches, though I found myself strangely reluctant to trade my quiet hillside for anywhere more demanding. The real pleasure was in not needing to be anywhere, to do anything, to achieve or accomplish or tick boxes.

One evening, watching the sky turn properly orange and then soft purple, I caught myself feeling almost guilty about such profound laziness. I have always been someone who returns from holidays needing another holiday to recover from the activities I have packed in. Here, the activity was absence itself. The gentle rhythm of days measured by sunlight and shadow, by the cool of morning and the weight of afternoon heat, by the slow descent into evening when the terrace became perfect again and the swallows gave way to bats.

I thought about that farmer who redirected me, laughing at the lost foreigner. He probably understood something I was only just learning. Some places are not about what you do in them. They are about what you stop doing, what you let go of, what you allow yourself to simply be instead.

On my final morning, I packed with the reluctance of someone leaving a particularly good dream. The cat from the olive grove watched me drive past, still judgemental, and I saluted it with genuine affection. I had arrived chaotic and slightly broken, and I was leaving held together by nothing more than sunshine, good tomatoes, and the profound restorative power of doing very little at all.