Getting to Stella Cilento involved a hire car, a sat nav with a vendetta against me, and one spectacularly ill-judged attempt to navigate a road clearly designed for goats. We had been on the road from Naples for the best part of three hours, the children were conducting a low-level mutiny in the back, and I was absolutely convinced I had missed the turning. I had not missed the turning. I had, in fact, turned onto what I now understand to be a farmer's private track, which ended in a locked gate, three extremely unimpressed dogs, and the slow realisation that I would have to reverse the entire way back down a single-track lane with a sheer drop on one side. My husband sat in perfect silence, which I choose to interpret as supportive.

We found the actual entrance eventually, marked by a far more welcoming gravel drive and the kind of rustic stone walls you see on postcards and assume cannot possibly be real. The villa sits in the Cilento countryside, surrounded by olive groves and hills that roll about in a rather show-offy fashion, and arriving there felt like accidentally stumbling into someone else's very good life. The owner, a cheerful man called Marco who spoke excellent English and possessed the patience of a saint, was waiting with keys and what I desperately hoped was not pity in his eyes.

The first thing that struck me was the terrace. Not the view, though that was staggering enough, all the way down to the sea glinting in the distance. No, it was the sheer size of the outdoor space, with its long table and barbecue area and pool that the children spotted and immediately began campaigning to enter despite having just spent seven hours in various states of travel grime. Marco showed us round with the practised ease of someone who has witnessed many families arrive in similar condition, pointing out the pizza oven with the casual air of a man who assumes everyone knows how to use one. Reader, I do not know how to use one. I nodded as though I did.

Inside, the place had that particular coolness of thick stone walls, with terracotta floors and wooden beams that my daughter immediately declared "aesthetic" and my son declared "old." The kitchen was pleasingly enormous and clearly designed for people who actually cook on holiday rather than those of us who primarily open wine and hope for the best. There was a fireplace I instantly pictured us gathered around, probably arguing about whose turn it was to fetch more wood, and bedrooms that smelled faintly of lavender and clean linen.

I will confess to a moment, standing on that terrace with a glass of something local and cold finally in hand, watching the children shriek their way into the pool fully clothed because we had not yet unpacked their costumes, where I felt something shift. The drive had been absurd. My navigation skills were clearly not what I imagined. But here we were, in this extraordinary place, with nothing demanding our attention beyond what to eat and whether the afternoon warranted another swim.

Marco had left us a bottle of wine and some home-grown tomatoes, which felt like the most generous welcome imaginable. I sat there as the light began to soften, listening to my family bicker happily about pool rules we would definitely not enforce, and thought that perhaps getting slightly lost was not the worst way to arrive somewhere. The dogs, at least, had seemed to forgive me.