I have never been so relieved to see a washing machine in my life. Three hours into our drive from Bologna airport, a rogue bottle of San Pellegrino had staged a revolt in the boot of our hire car, soaking every pair of trousers I had packed. My partner Dave just kept saying "at least it wasn't the wine" in this irritatingly zen tone he'd adopted the moment we touched down in Italy. I was less philosophical. I was trouserless in a Fiat 500, sweating through the flatlands of Emilia Romagna, and wondering if this was what people meant by "holiday romance."

The final stretch to Lido di Pomposa is pure sensory overload after the motorway monotony. Suddenly there are pine forests pressing against the road, the smell of salt drifting through the vents, and these gloriously faded pastel buildings that look like they've been left in the sun since the seventies. Our little holiday flat was tucked into one of those low-rise complexes you see everywhere along this stretch of Adriatic coast. Nothing fancy. A balcony, some plastic chairs, shutters that clatter in the morning breeze. Dave called it "authentically modest" which I suppose is one way of describing somewhere that still has a CRT television.

I dumped my sodden luggage and walked straight onto that balcony in my last dry pair of shorts. The pines were doing that whispering thing they do, and beyond them I could just make out the flat blue line where the sky gives up and becomes sea. Somewhere a woman was calling for someone named Marco. A scooter puttered past with what sounded like a crate of bottles rattling on the back. I stood there with a warm beer from the fridge and felt something in my shoulders actually release. Not dramatically. Just... gradually, like a slow puncture.

The flat itself had that particular Italian holiday rental quality of being simultaneously basic and completely adequate. The kitchen had exactly four of everything, which forced a pleasing minimalism. The beds were made with that crisp, slightly starched linen that smells of sunshine and distant laundry facilities. I found a copy of a Wilbur Smith novel left by some previous tenant and decided this would be my literary companion for the week. I have never read Wilbur Smith. I was going to read Wilbur Smith. This felt like the kind of arbitrary decision that constitutes a proper holiday.

Our first evening we walked to the nearest stretch of beach, maybe ten minutes through the pines on a sandy path that got into everything. The beach here is wide and unpretentious, with rows of coloured umbrellas standing to attention like a sunburnt army. We paid our few euros for two loungers and immediately horizontalised. Dave fell asleep with his mouth open. I read three pages of Wilbur Smith, got confused by all the colonial machismo, and simply watched the water instead. The Adriatic at this particular bit of coast does this shimmering thing in late afternoon, all silvers and pale blues, and the horizon feels close enough to touch. A child was building an elaborate sand fortress nearby, complete with moat. His grandfather supervised with the intense focus of a structural engineer.

Dinner that night was at one of the simple trattorias along the main strip, the kind with laminated menus and house wine that arrives in unlabelled jugs. We ate grilled sardines and a tomato salad that actually tasted of tomatoes, which I mention only because British tomatoes have apparently forgotten this is possible. The waiter brought us limoncello we didn't order and we drank it anyway, sitting there as the local families strolled past in their evening passeggiata, children on bicycles, teenagers being dramatically bored.

Walking back in the dark, the pines making that soft rushing sound, Dave observed that we'd done approximately nothing all day. He said it with satisfaction. I thought about my abandoned trousers, drying on the balcony railing like a flag of surrender, and realised this was precisely the point. The mishap had forced a kind of simplicity. No complicated outings, no ambitious plans, just the slow rhythm of heat and water and occasional movement.

The next morning I woke to shutters rattling and the distant sound of someone else's radio. I made terrible coffee in the tiny kitchen and took it back to bed. Wilbur Smith waited on the bedside table. The day stretched ahead with the luxurious emptiness of a proper coastal holiday, promising nothing more demanding than another walk through the pines, another horizontal afternoon, another jug of anonymous wine. I cannot remember the last time doing so little felt so completely sufficient.