Getting to our Lagolo in the Dolomites took roughly three hours from Verona airport, which sounds straightforward until you factor in my steadfast refusal to pay motorway tolls and a sat nav that appeared to be having some sort of existential crisis. "Turn left," it would say, serenely, as we faced a sheer rock face. "Recalculating," it added, with what I can only describe as digital disappointment. The children had begun a competitive whingeing match in the back, and my other half was doing that thing where he breathes very quietly through his nose, which always means I have approximately four minutes before he suggests we turn around and book a Premier Inn instead.

Then we rounded a bend near Trento and the mountains simply appeared, as if someone had unrolled a enormous green and grey backdrop while we were bickering about snacks. The jagged peaks of the Dolomites rose up in the afternoon light, and even the children went momentarily silent, which I consider one of the great parenting victories of my lifetime.

The final approach to our Lagolo was where the mishap occurred. The property sits in a small hamlet above Lake Ledro, and the last stretch is a narrow lane that winds between stone houses and sudden glimpses of valley below. I was concentrating so hard on not scraping the hire car that I completely missed the turning, carried on for nearly a mile, and then attempted what I can only describe as an ambitious three-point turn on a road roughly the width of a generous bicycle path. There was a moment where the rear wheels made a sound like gravel being introduced to gravel, and I found myself staring through the windscreen at a very patient local man who had stopped his moped to watch this spectacle with the expression of someone observing a particularly inept nature documentary. He gestured helpfully, I reversed with what dignity remained, and we eventually found the proper entrance, which was marked by a wooden sign I had somehow driven straight past.

The Lagolo itself was one of a small cluster of converted farm buildings, all timber balconies and flower boxes and that particular hush that mountain air seems to carry. Ours had a covered terrace where a wooden table sat waiting, and beyond it the lake glimmered through a gap in the pines like someone had left a mirror lying about. The children immediately vanished to investigate a swing set they had spotted, and my other half and I stood there with our bags at our feet, suddenly aware of how much tension we had been carrying in our shoulders since Gatwick.

Inside, the place had that satisfying cottage solidity: thick walls, wooden beams you could actually see rather than decorative nonsense, a kitchen that looked like it had cooked a thousand simple pasta suppers and would happily manage a thousand more. There was a wood-burning stove we would not need in August but which I immediately wanted to light anyway, and windows that framed the mountains like paintings someone had thoughtfully hung for us.

I keep catching myself planning too much on holiday, wanting to extract maximum value from every moment as if joy were something to be efficiently harvested. But standing on that terrace with a cup of tea made from questionable Italian teabags, watching my son attempt to push my daughter on a swing with more enthusiasm than coordination, I felt the particular relief of arriving somewhere that asks very little of you except to be present. The moped man, the sat nav meltdown, the gravel incident: they had become part of the story already, the small comedy of getting somewhere worth the trouble.

That evening we walked down to the lake, perhaps ten minutes on a path through woods that smelled of pine and warm earth. The water was that impossible mountain turquoise, and families were swimming and paddling and doing the universal language of relaxed holiday nothing-much-at-all. We bought ice creams from a small kiosk and sat on a bench watching the light change on the peaks, and I thought that this was exactly what we had needed: not an adventure, not an experience, just this ordinary extraordinary quiet, and time enough to notice it.