I have never been so relieved to see a compost bin in my entire life. There we were, three hours into our drive from Klagenfurt Airport, winding through the Gail Valley with me confidently ignoring the satnav, when I realised I had absolutely no idea which turning led to Maria Luggau. My partner sat in blessed silence, which I have learned to interpret as active resentment. We found ourselves in somebody's driveway, facing a very confused gentleman in lederhosen who spoke exclusively in rapid Carinthian dialect. I smiled, nodded, and reversed with the dignity of a man who has made poor choices.

Twenty minutes later, the actual Maria Luggau appeared round a bend like a promise kept. A traditional Carinthian farmhouse, all wooden balconies and flower boxes spilling geraniums, settled into a meadow that sloped gently toward nothing more demanding than a view of the Gailtal Alps. I stepped out of the car and immediately felt my shoulders drop somewhere round my knees.

The owners had left the key in the customary Austrian fashion: no fuss, no performance, just trust and a handwritten note wishing us "guade Ruh" - good rest. I needed it. The mishap had taken more out of me than I care to admit. There is something humbling about getting lost in a valley that consists essentially of one road and your own stupidity.

But oh, the garden. I cannot do it justice without sounding like a man who has discovered gardening programmes late in life and cannot stop talking about them. A proper working garden, not manicured within an inch of its life but generous, slightly chaotic, fruit trees and vegetable patches and herbs growing in places that suggested happy accident rather than masterplan. I found a wooden bench beneath an old apple tree and sat there with my book, and that was essentially the pattern of the next several days.

I had brought three novels and finished two of them without once feeling guilty about neglected sightseeing. The third I am still reading, deliberately slowly, because I have learned that finishing books too quickly on holiday is its own small tragedy. My partner, who possesses the remarkable ability to do absolutely nothing without apparent anxiety, spent hours in a hammock that creaked companionably in whatever breeze found its way down from the mountains. We spoke in reduced sentences. Whole hours passed with nothing more than the observation that a particular cloud resembled a surprised sheep.

The house itself encouraged this laziness. Thick walls that kept the afternoon heat at bay, wooden floors that creaked in specific places so you learned to step around them, a kitchen window that framed the garden like a painting someone had hung specifically for your benefit while washing up. I cooked simple things: eggs from a neighbour, tomatoes that tasted of actual tomatoes, bread from the bakery in Kötschach-Mauthen that I walked to precisely once and felt quite exhausted by the effort.

There was a moment, perhaps day three, when I considered a walk to the Lesach Valley as recommended in the visitor book. I even put on proper shoes. Then I sat back down on my bench with my book and the consideration passed like a mild headache. The shoes came off. I have spent years, I reflected, confusing activity with purpose. Here was purpose without activity: sunlight through leaves, the distant sound of cowbells, a bee working methodically through lavender I had no hand in planting.

Evenings brought the particular pleasure of doing slightly different nothing. Cooking slowly, eating outside until the light faded, watching bats emerge from somewhere in the eaves to begin their own unhurried patrol. We talked more then, but still without urgency, conversations that wandered like the garden paths.

I did not see much of Carinthia, by conventional standards. I cannot tell you about castles or cable cars or the recommended hiking trails. I can tell you that the compost bin, when we finally found it, was excellently maintained. I can tell you that doing very little, in the right place, with the right person, is not nothing at all. It is, I suspect, rather closer to what we are meant to be doing, and we have simply forgotten how.

On our last morning, I sat on that bench with my unfinished book and watched mist lift from the meadow like a curtain rising on nothing special, which was, of course, everything.