I have never been so grateful to see a stone wall in my life. After six hours of driving from Bari, two wrong turns near Matera, and one spectacular argument with a sat nav that insisted Ferrandina was "recalculating" somewhere in the Ionian Sea, I finally crunched up the gravel drive of what I hoped was our holiday let. It was. I think. The key was exactly where the email said: under a terracotta pot beside the door. The pot, naturally, was glued to the wall with what appeared to be several decades of good honest dirt.

The mishap came thirty seconds later. I grabbed the key, turned triumphantly to my partner, and performed what I can only describe as a full backward somersault into a lavender bush. The pot had not been empty. A very startled lizard shot one way, I went the other, and somewhere in the middle my dignity remained permanently lodged among the stems. My partner did not help. She stood there with our bags, laughing in that silent-shoulder-shaking way that means she will be telling this story at Christmas for approximately the next fifteen years.

Ferrandina, I should explain, sits in the instep of Italy's boot, surrounded by olive groves that stretch to every horizon like a green-grey sea. It is not famous. This is rather the point. You do not come here for crowds or queues or someone selling novelty magnets outside a cathedral. You come here for the slow collapse of an afternoon into evening, for the smell of wild fennel on hot air, for the particular silence of a town that has been minding its own business since before anyone thought to write things down.

Our place was a low stone house with a small pool that caught the light like a promise. Inside, the floors were tiled in that faded terracotta that makes every footstep sound deliberate and slightly important. The kitchen had a proper gas hob, a fridge that hummed with the determination of a pensioner on a bicycle, and a note from the owners in charmingly direct English: "Olive oil in cupboard. Very strong. Do not be brave."

I was brave. The first evening's bruschetta nearly took the roof of my mouth off. I have no regrets.

What struck me most, once I had extracted myself from the lavender and located a cold beer, was how immediately the place demanded a different rhythm. There was no urge to unpack properly, to plan, to tick off sights. Instead I found myself on the terrace with that beer, watching swallows carve up the sky while the hills turned from gold to rust to something approaching violet. My partner joined me, still smirking. We did not speak much. There seemed no great hurry to start.

The house had rough plaster walls that held the cool even in late afternoon, wooden shutters that actually functioned, and a bathroom with a shower whose water pressure suggested someone very senior in the village had to approve each individual droplet. I loved it instantly. There is something about places that have not been smoothed out for international consumption, that still carry the particular bumps and compromises of actual living.

Dinner that first night was simple and local: bread, cheese, tomatoes that tasted of actual sunshine, that ferocious oil. We ate outside until the mosquitoes politely suggested we move in. I fell asleep to the sound of cicadas and something else, something I eventually identified as complete and total quiet.

The lizard, I am told, has not been seen since. I like to think we have an understanding.