I have never been brilliant at reading the small print, so when I booked our stay at the Oropesa in Valencia, I somehow missed that the property was not actually in Valencia city at all. There we were, trundling out of the airport in our hire car, full of sangria-fuelled optimism, following the sat nav towards what I assumed was a city centre apartment. The urban landscape gradually gave way to orange groves, then to dusty tracks lined with pine trees, and finally to a quiet coastal road where a modest white villa sat blinking in the late September sunshine. My partner gave me that look. The one that says, "We will discuss this later over patatas bravas."

September, as it turns out, was the making of that particular mishap. The summer crowds had melted away like ice in a tinto de verano, leaving the little coves near Oropesa del Mar to those of us who had accidentally stumbled upon them. The villa itself had a small terrace where bougainvillea still clung to the walls in defiant purple bursts, though the heat had softened from the August furnace to something more like a warm embrace. I remember standing there with a supermarket beer, watching the light turn golden earlier in the evening than it would have in high summer, feeling that particular September stillness that makes you notice things you might otherwise miss.

The seasonal shift shaped everything about those first few days. The pool, which I imagine would have been a battleground of inflatable flamingos in July, sat there inviting and almost private. The water was still warm enough for a proper swim, but you felt the first faint whisper of autumn in the air when you climbed out, that little shiver that sends you reaching for a towel rather than simply dripping dry in the sun. In the mornings, condensation gathered on the outdoor furniture, and I developed a small ritual of wiping down the plastic chairs with a tea towel before breakfast, something I cannot imagine doing in the height of summer.

What struck me most was how the local rhythm had changed with the season. The beach bars were packing up their sun loungers, stacking them in neat towers that looked almost sculptural against the empty sand. A man in a faded polo shirt swept the terrace of the nearest chiringuito with the resigned efficiency of someone who knows the season is nearly done. We got talking to him one evening, my terrible Spanish and his patient corrections, and he told us that October would bring the proper storms, that the sea would turn rough and magnificent. "Ahora es tranquilo," he said, gesturing at the calm water. Now it is tranquil. He made it sound like a secret he was sharing, something precious between the summer madness and the winter shutdown.

That September light had a quality I have never quite found at other times of year. It slanted through the villa's shutters in the afternoon, casting striped shadows across the terracotta tiles, making the whole place feel like a film set for a very gentle European drama. I found myself moving slower, reading more, actually noticing the way the swallows gathered on the telephone wires each evening before their mysterious seasonal departure. My partner, who had every right to sulk about my booking blunder, instead started taking long photographs of the empty beach at dawn, the kind of contemplative activity that only seems possible when the world has quietened down.

The mishap of location became, by the end of that first week, the accidental gift of timing. We had not meant to find ourselves in that particular pocket of coast, in that particular villa with its slightly wonky sun umbrella and its collection of mismatched glasses. But September had made it ours in a way that July never could have. I still smile when I think of that first afternoon, the sat nav insisting we had arrived while we stared at a villa that was definitely not in any city centre, the bougainvillea dropping its first faded petals onto the warm stone. Sometimes the wrong turn takes you exactly where you needed to be, provided you arrive at the right moment.