I have never been so grateful for a sat nav with a sense of humour as I was driving to our Perdifumo holiday let last August. My partner Dave and I had flown into Naples, picked up a Fiat so small my knees were practically steering, and set off for the Cilento coast full of optimism and poorly pronounced Italian. Three hours later, we were still optimistic. The sat nav, however, had given up and sent us up a goat track somewhere near Agropoli, where we encountered a shepherd named Vincenzo who spoke no English and communicated entirely through expressive hand gestures and the occasional whistle at his dogs.

"You want Perdifumo?" he said, after Dave attempted to explain our destination using a combination of charades and the Google Translate voice that sounds permanently disappointed in you. Vincenzo scratched his chin, looked at our Fiat with the kind of pity usually reserved for three-legged dogs, and pointed vaguely upward. "Bruna," he said. "Ask Bruna." Then he whistled, and a woman appeared from behind an olive tree as if summoned by magic.

Bruna was seventy if she was a day, wearing a floral apron over a tracksuit, and carrying a basket of figs that she immediately insisted we take. "English?" she said, not waiting for an answer. "My nephew, he work in Swindon. Terrible place." Before we could defend Swindon's honour, she had commandeered our map, produced a biro from somewhere in her apron, and drawn a route that involved landmarks like "the bent cypress" and "where Giovanni's dog died." She waved off our thanks with a dismissive flap of her hand. "Vincenzo is idiot with directions. Always has been. Since 1957."

We found the place eventually, though I will admit we drove past "the bent cypress" twice before realising it was not, in fact, merely a tree having a slow afternoon.

The Perdifumo property itself sat on a hillside terrace, all weathered stone and terracotta pots, with a view down to the Mediterranean that made me actually say "blimey" out loud. Dave was already unpacking the figs and looking pleased with himself, as if he had personally cultivated Bruna's orchard. Our host, a man called Marco who managed the property for some unseen owner, emerged from behind a lemon tree with a wheelbarrow and the resigned expression of someone who had watched many British people attempt to reverse into his parking space.

"First time in Cilento?" he asked, though it was clearly not a question requiring an answer. Marco had the weathered look of a man who spent his mornings arguing with agricultural suppliers and his afternoons drinking something local and strong. He showed us around with the brisk efficiency of a man who had done this two hundred times, pausing only to correct Dave's pronunciation of "mozzarella" with a patience that barely masked his pain.

"You are here for how long?" he asked.

"Ten days," I said.

Marco nodded slowly, as if we had just told him we intended to learn quantum physics. "Good. Long enough to slow down. Short enough you will not try to buy property." He said this with the certainty of someone who had watched many foreigners fall in love with crumbling farmhouses and regrettable life decisions.

That evening, we walked down to the village proper, a ten-minute stroll that became twenty because every person we passed had something to say. An old man sitting outside the barber's shop commented on Dave's sandals with a disapproving cluck. A woman leaning from a first-floor window advised us, unprompted, that the restaurant on the corner was "acceptable" but the one two streets over was "for tourists who do not know better." She said "tourists" the way other people might say "fungal infection."

We ate at the acceptable place, mostly because we were too intimidated to disobey. The owner, a woman called Rosa who turned out to be Bruna's daughter, recognised us immediately from some village telegraph I still do not understand. "My mother says you have terrible car," she announced, placing bread on our table with the force of a judgement. "She is correct. But the figs, you enjoyed?"

We had, we assured her. We had eaten them in the car, sticky and happy, somewhere between Vincenzo's goats and our third wrong turn.

Rosa softened slightly, the way people do when you validate their family's produce. "Tomorrow, you go to the market in Castellabate. But early. Before the heat makes everyone stupid." She said this with the authority of someone who had watched the heat make everyone stupid many times.

We promised we would. We did not, as it happened, because we slept until ten and emerged blinking into a morning that already felt like midday. But Rosa, when we saw her again, merely shrugged. "English," she said, with the same resignation Marco had shown. "Always with the sleeping."

By day three, I had been scolded for my coffee order by a man called Salvatore who ran the tabacchi and seemed to consider it a personal mission to educate foreigners on proper espresso etiquette. "You want cappuccino? At eleven?" He had looked at me with genuine concern, as if I had announced plans to juggle knives. "This is not Rome. We have standards." He made it anyway, but with a theatrical sigh that made Dave snort into his macchiato.

I found myself, quite unexpectedly, loving all of it. The scrutiny, the unsolicited advice, the absolute certainty that everyone in this village knew exactly how we should live our lives and was not shy about saying so. Back home, we barely knew our neighbours' names. Here, a man I had met once remembered I was a teacher and asked after my "stressful children" with a smirk that suggested he did not believe teaching was proper work.

On our fifth evening, we found ourselves at a communal table at Rosa's restaurant, pressed between a local couple celebrating their anniversary and a German family who had also fallen under Bruna's directional care. The wine flowed with dangerous generosity. Marco appeared from somewhere, pulled up a chair uninvited, and spent an hour explaining why the olive harvest was two weeks late and whose fault this definitely was. "Giovanni," he said, with the finality of a judge passing sentence. "Always Giovanni."

"Is Giovanni here?" Dave asked, perhaps unwisely.

Marco waved his hand. "Giovanni is in Bari. Hiding. As he should."

We left Perdifumo ten days later with olive oil we did not need, fig jam from Bruna, and the phone number of Salvatore's cousin who apparently ran a BandB in Sicily that was "acceptable, if you must go there." Dave had learned three Italian phrases, two of them wrong. I had been thoroughly educated on my failings as a coffee drinker, a driver, and a sandal-wearer.

Driving away, down a road I now knew by heart, I watched Vincenzo's goats in the distance and felt something I had not expected. Not just the peace of a beautiful place, but the peculiar warmth of having been, however briefly, noticed. Scolded, advised, fed, and judged. Handed figs by a stranger and told your car was terrible by her entire extended family.

Dave reached over and squeezed my hand. "Same time next year?"

I thought of Rosa's theatrical sighs, Marco's resigned competence, Salvatore's espresso evangelism. "Absolutely," I said. "But we're hiring a bigger car."

"Bruna will still say it's terrible."

"Probably," I agreed, and smiled all the way to the airport.