I have never been a natural navigator, and my family's decision to let me lead the way to our Roccadaspide cottage in Campania only proved what we already knew. We had flown into Naples, collected a hire car that was slightly too small for four people and a boot full of suitcases, and set off into the green hills of the Cilento region with nothing but optimism and a phone that died precisely halfway there. My wife handed me the paper directions from the booking confirmation, which I had folded into my back pocket and subsequently sat on during a service station panini break. The resulting crease obscured the final turning, and we spent forty minutes circling what I am fairly certain was the same olive grove three times, waving cheerfully at the same baffled farmer each pass.

The mishap that truly defines our arrival, though, involved the cottage gate. Having finally located the property, tucked among terraced gardens with views I immediately forgave everything for, I strode up to what I assumed was the entrance with the confidence of a man who had conquered basic orientation. The key turned smoothly enough, but the gate refused to budge. I pushed. I pulled. I muttered things in English that the neighbouring chickens probably found quite colourful. My teenage son, who had been silently filming this on his phone for posterity, eventually pointed out that I was trying to enter through the neighbour's identical-looking gate, and that our actual entrance was three metres to the left, marked by a rather obvious terracotta pot I had somehow missed. The neighbour, an elegant woman in her seventies, watched this entire performance from her upstairs window with the patient amusement of someone who has seen many British holidaymakers make exactly this discovery.

Our cottage, when I finally located it, was everything the creased directions had promised. A restored stone farmhouse with cool, tiled floors that felt heavenly after the car journey, and a kitchen that smelled faintly of rosemary from the bush growing just outside the window. The children vanished immediately to investigate the pool, leaving my wife and me to stand in the living room with our bags still unpacked, simply breathing in the quiet. It is a particular kind of silence, the Campania countryside, layered with cicadas and distant church bells rather than true quiet, but after Naples traffic it felt like a religious experience.

I found myself reflecting, as I inevitably do on these trips, about how much of family holidays is actually about these unscripted moments. The planned excursions matter less than the evening we would later spend attempting to cook pasta on a slightly temperamental hob, or the morning my daughter discovered she could reach the fig tree from the bedroom window. The gate incident would become legend within our family before the week was out, retold with embellishments at every opportunity.

That first evening, we walked the narrow lane down to Roccadaspide village proper, perhaps ten minutes at a stroll, passing lemon trees heavy with fruit and gardens where tomatoes ripened on vines tied to every available fence post. We bought bread from a bakery where no one spoke English and my phrasebook Italian earned sympathetic smiles, and ate simple sandwiches on our terrace as the light faded over the hills. The children, usually attached to screens, were distracted by a gecko hunting moths near the outside light. My wife poured wine that cost embarrassingly little and tasted of sunshine.

I will not pretend I became a different person that week. I still got lost walking to the village shop on day three, and my attempt to ask for dishwasher tablets in Italian somehow resulted in being directed to the local pharmacy with great concern for my wellbeing. But there is something about arriving somewhere that does not immediately yield to you, that makes you work slightly for your pleasures, that imprints the experience more deeply. The gate, the olive grove, the creased directions in my pocket. These are the souvenirs I kept.