I have never been so grateful to see a stone wall in my life. After seven hours of driving from Pescara airport, my partner navigating with the confidence of someone who had definitely not forgotten to download the offline maps, we finally crunched onto the gravel drive of our moscufo in Abruzzo. The sat nav had given up twenty minutes earlier, announcing we had reached our destination while we were clearly in the middle of an olive grove, surrounded by trees that looked like they had been growing since the Romans packed it in.

The mishap, because there is always one with us, came during the final hour. Convinced we were being clever by taking the scenic route, we found ourselves behind a tractor moving at what I can only describe as geological speed. My partner, ever the optimist, decided we could squeeze past on a road that turned out to be narrower than my patience. The wing mirror clipped a stone pillar with a sound like a gunshot, and I spent the next ten minutes checking if I had actually lost a finger from the shock. The mirror hung on, wounded but functional, much like my dignity.

The moscufo itself was immediately forgiving. These traditional farmhouses, built for practicality rather than Pinterest perfection, have a way of making you feel small in the best possible sense. Thick walls that have absorbed centuries of family arguments and Sunday lunches. A heavy wooden door that required a shoulder and some creative language to open. Our particular one sat among rolling hills that seemed to shift colour every hour, from morning gold to evening purple, like someone slowly turning down the lights.

The children had already disappeared round the back before I had even found the key, which turned out to be hidden exactly where the booking email said it would be, had I bothered to read past the first paragraph. Their shrieks announced the discovery of the pool, which looked impossibly blue against the terracotta stone and the wild rosemary growing in cracks where no gardener would ever reach.

Inside smelled of woodsmoke and something I could not identify but immediately wanted to bottle. The kitchen was dominated by a fireplace you could practically stand in, and I caught myself imagining autumn evenings with a fire and a bottle of Montepulciano, despite it being June and thirty degrees outside. There was a moment, standing in that cool darkness after the bright drive, where I felt the particular weight of being somewhere properly old. Not museum old, with ropes and explanations, but lived-in old, where the floorboards slope because thousands of footsteps have worn them that way.

I unpacked badly, as is my tradition, leaving cases half-open in doorways and immediately forgetting where I had put the kettle. My partner discovered that the outdoor shower, which seemed charmingly rustic in the photographs, was in fact just cold water from a hose with better PR. The children reappeared covered in grass cuttings and demanding to know if there were wild boar in the woods. I said probably not, though I had absolutely no idea.

By evening we were on the terrace with bread, local cheese that tasted like it had opinions, and wine that cost less than a London coffee. The damaged wing mirror seemed funny now, part of the story rather than the disaster it had felt like. Somewhere a dog barked, and the hills went dark in layers, the nearest ones still visible as charcoal shapes, the distant ones simply gone.

That first night I slept better than I had in months, waking once to absolute silence so complete it felt almost loud. I lay there thinking about how we had rushed to get there, the stress of the journey, the mirror, the maps, the children needing the toilet at the worst possible moments. And how none of it mattered now, replaced by the simple fact of being somewhere that asked nothing of you except to slow down and notice.

The morning brought mist in the valley below and the realisation that I had packed twelve books and no swimming towels. Some things, I suppose, you never learn.