Our home for the week was Villa Evagelia, the last in a row of three newish but stylish detached houses booked with Thomson Villas with Pools, which give you exactly what it says on the tin. Ours was a spotlessly clean, fully-equipped two-bedroom house with a real pool (it has a deep end dug for grown-ups, not kids) in a tidy garden just a few steps from the kitchen we quickly stocked with a week’s supply of dinners and, far more interestingly, fine white Cretan wine. It was an ideal base for a peaceful, secluded and slothful holiday under a still scorching September sun. And that’s what many go to Greece to get: sun, sea, sand and, er, souvenirs of course.

Kalives (it’s the Greek word for huts) is a village that without holidaymakers – Greek as well as us foreigners – would be even smaller than it is, but it is also one that, somehow, hasn’t allowed tourism to take over. Its narrow main street, clogged by illegally parked cars, is lined not only with tavernas, cafés, bars and gift shops but also commonplace hairdressers, grocery stores, bakeries and ironmongers. There’s even a barrelmakers, presided over by Demitrios Hagidemetrios, whose grandfather and father ran the business before him and whose son now carries the barrelmaking baton.

He saw me taking photographs of his barrels – for wine and olive oil – offered to pose with them for a snap and invited me into his shop, where he pulled from his wallet an ageing wartime photo of himself as a Chief Petty Officer in the British navy.

“I was at sea when the Germans invaded and occupied Crete,” he told me. “I went to England and joined your navy. The Germans were all prisoners of war when I came home. You like Kalives?”

What I liked about Kalives was its workaday but relaxed ordinariness and it’s surrender to the rhythms of the Greek day. The main street bustles until early afternoon, when the siesta empties the streets and lanes of all but Englishmen looking for the cricket reports in day-old newspapers. There’s a large church at the t-junction that’s halfway down the main street and which just about doubles as the village square. On Sundays it’s packed as worshippers leave church to gather and gossip there before moving to a favoured café across the road.

Our days slumped into an easy routine – a quick drive down the lane to the supermarket for fresh bread, breakfast and a morning of swimming and sunbathing on one or other of the village’s two shelving sandy beaches followed by lunch. The main village beach – gently curved, safe for children and with trees for shade – has tavernas, cafés and a couple of discreet hotels. There’s a longer, straighter stretch of beach to the west of the village – known as Kalives Apokoronou – which has two tavernas, the best of which is the Piperia. The bill for a long but light lunch for two, a bottle of local wine, friendly service and one of the best sea views on the island was never more than £15. Afternoons were spent back at the villa – where there was nothing to be done but swim, laze in the sun, read, look forward to a star-lit dinner by the pool and to doing it all again tomorrow.

We broke the routine to make a return visit to charming Chania, but we never made it to Knossos. Next time – perhaps.