I have never been so grateful to see a pine tree in all my life. After fourteen hours of travel that included a delayed flight to Rome, a train that decided to terminate early at some platform I still cannot pronounce, and a hire car with a sat nav that appeared to be having some kind of existential crisis, I finally pulled up to our holiday home in Pineto. The thing is, I had been so smug about booking a place with a private pool. "Won't need to fight for sun loungers," I told my partner. "Our own little slice of Abruzzo paradise." What I had not accounted for was my own spectacular talent for making simple things complicated.

The mishap, when it came, was almost impressively stupid. I had the key code written on my phone, which was at four percent battery because I had been using it to frantically Google "why is Italian train stopping here." I managed to punch in the numbers with trembling thumbs, flung open the front door, and immediately walked straight into a shutter that I had not noticed was half-closed. There was a loud clang, a yelp that I am choosing to believe sounded dignified, and the realisation that I had just announced my arrival to the entire neighbourhood. A cat sitting on the neighbouring wall looked at me with the kind of judgement I usually reserve for people who put pineapple on pizza.

But here is the thing about Pineto, and about Abruzzo in general. It does not rush you. After the chaos of the journey, standing in the garden of that house with the scent of pine everywhere and the Adriatic somehow already in the air even though the beach was still a few minutes away, I felt something in my shoulders actually drop. The pool glittered in the late afternoon light, looking impossibly inviting and nothing like the murky paddling situation I had secretly feared. Terracotta pots sat around with plants that actually appeared to be thriving, which immediately made me feel guilty about the sorry basil plant I had left wilting on a London windowsill.

The house itself had that particular Italian holiday rental quality of being simultaneously more spacious than expected and charmingly eccentric. The kitchen opened onto a covered terrace where I could already picture myself eating grilled vegetables and drinking wine that cost less than a London coffee. Upstairs, the bedrooms had shutters that actually worked, unlike that fateful one downstairs, and from the balcony I could see the pine forest that gives this stretch of coast its name stretching towards the sea.

I found myself standing there with a stupid grin on my face, still rubbing my forehead where the shutter had connected, thinking about how I had spent the entire journey stressed about timings and connections and whether I had packed enough sunscreen. And now here I was, in a town where the main evening entertainment appeared to be the passeggiata, that lovely Italian ritual of strolling about looking at things and people and generally being present in the world. No one was checking their watch. No one was updating a spreadsheet in their head. The only spreadsheet I planned to consult was the one I was mentally constructing about which local gelateria deserved repeat visits.

That first evening, we walked the ten minutes to Pineto's lungomare, the seafront promenade, because driving anywhere after my performance with the shutter felt unwise. The beach was still busy with families and teenagers and old men in small swimming costumes who had clearly been doing this exact thing for decades. We ate pizza at a place where the waiter did not rush us, where the wine came in a carafe that held roughly enough for a small rowing expedition, and where I finally stopped checking my phone for transport updates.

Walking back in the dark, slightly wobbly and very full, I heard the pine trees moving in the warm breeze and thought about how I had arrived convinced that the journey mattered more than the destination, that the stress would somehow taint everything. But Abruzzo, I was learning, has a way of slowing you down whether you plan for it or not. The mishaps become stories. The wrong turns become discoveries. And the shutter that assaults you on arrival becomes, apparently, something you will laugh about for the entire fortnight, mostly because your partner will not let you forget it.

I fell asleep that first night to the sound of cicadas and the distant sea, already planning a morning swim before the heat built, already forgiving myself for the chaos of getting here. Some places ask you to earn your relaxation. Pineto, I think, simply waits until you are ready to receive it.