I have never been brilliant at reading maps, which is how I ended up driving our hire car down what I can only describe as a goat track somewhere near Martinsicuro, convinced I was taking a scenic shortcut to our holiday let. The sat nav had given up on me some ten minutes earlier, and my partner sat in the passenger seat making that particular face he does when he is trying very hard not to say "I told you so." It was late June, the kind of afternoon where the Abruzzo heat sits heavy and golden over everything, and there we were, bumping along between olive groves with the windows down and the smell of warm dust and wild fennel drifting in.

We found the proper road eventually, naturally just round the corner from where we had gone wrong, and pulled up at the property with that particular mixture of relief and mild humiliation that defines most of our holidays. The place was a modest apartment in a small complex, the sort of straightforward Italian holiday home that does exactly what it promises without any fuss. What struck me first was the garden, or rather how the June light fell across it, making everything look slightly overexposed and dreamy. The bougainvillea was going absolutely mad against the walls, that shocking magenta that almost hurts your eyes in direct sun.

I had worried, in that vague way you do before a trip, that June might be too early, that we would miss the proper summer buzz and find everything half-closed or not quite ready. I could not have been more wrong. The season was doing something marvellous to the place. The local shops were just hitting their stride, the fruit and veg man at the weekly market had peaches that actually smelled of peaches, and the beach, when we wandered down that first evening, was busy enough to feel alive but not so packed that you could not find a spot to sit and watch the light change.

That first night, we cooked badly. I say we, but it was mostly me insisting we use the tiny kitchen properly, buying too much from the supermarket in town, including some local pecorino that I became slightly obsessed with over the course of the week. We ate on the balcony as the heat finally began to ease off, that particular Abruzzo warmth that lingers even after dark, making you feel as though you are wrapped in something soft. The crickets were already going at full volume, that relentless Mediterranean soundtrack that takes a day or two to stop noticing.

I remember sitting there with a glass of mediocre local white, watching the last light fade over what I later learned were the Apennine foothills, and feeling that particular seasonal contentment that comes from arriving somewhere at exactly the right moment. A week earlier and the summer proper would not have kicked in, the water would have been that bit too sharp, the evenings too cool for sitting out in short sleeves. A week later and the crowds would have thickened, the heat would have shifted from pleasant to oppressive, and I suspect I would have been writing a rather different article about air conditioning and queueing for ice cream.

There is something about that first evening of a holiday, when you are still slightly disoriented from travel and the place has not yet become familiar, that makes you notice things you later stop seeing. The way the local cats moved through the garden with that particular summer laziness, too hot to bother with proper hunting. The smell of someone else's barbecue drifting over from another balcony. The particular quality of light that made even the ordinary block buildings look briefly beautiful.

I think what I am trying to say is that I arrived in Martinsicuro slightly frazzled, having got lost in spectacular fashion, and found a place that was exactly where it needed to be in the turning year, and somehow that made me feel exactly where I needed to be too. The season had set the stage perfectly, and all I had to do was slow down enough to notice.