I should have known the satnav was up to no good the moment it tried to send us up what looked like a goat's footpath somewhere near Castelnovo ne' Monti. There we were, three hours out of Bologna Airport, crammed into a Fiat Panda with enough luggage for a fortnight and a seven-year-old asking if we were nearly there for the forty-seventh time. My husband Dave was driving, gripping the wheel like he was landing a plane, and I was meant to be navigating. I say navigating. I was mostly eating the last of the airport Pringles and confidently pointing at roads that clearly did not exist.

The mishap came when I spotted a sign for Passo del Cerreto and got overexcited. "Turn left, turn left!" I shouted, as if we were in a spy film. Dave turned left. We bounced down a gravel track for ten minutes, passing increasingly confused-looking sheep, before arriving at what was definitely someone's private olive grove. An elderly gentleman in a flat cap emerged from a shed and just stared at us. No wave, no words, just a deeply Italian stare that said everything. Dave reversed the entire way back while I made apologetic hand gestures out the window. The seven-year-old thought it was the best thing that had ever happened.

When we finally found the actual property, tucked into the hills with the Apennines rolling behind it, I could have cried with relief. And perhaps a bit of embarrassment. The house sat there like something from a postcard we'd never admit to buying, all warm stone and wooden shutters, with a terrace that looked out over nothing but trees and sky. A proper cottage-style place, not fancy, not trying too hard. The sort of holiday let where you immediately notice the outdoor table and start planning long lunches.

The owner had left the key in a tin behind a potted lavender bush, which felt thrillingly rustic and faintly concerning in equal measure. Inside smelled of wood polish and something herby, rosemary maybe. The kitchen was small but properly equipped, not one of those holiday kitchens where you open a drawer and find a single bent fork. I ran my hand along the wooden dining table and pictured evening card games, the sort where someone gets mildly competitive and everyone else pretends not to notice.

Dave opened the shutters in the main bedroom and proper mountain air flooded in, cold and clean and completely different from the stuffy plane. The seven-year-old had already claimed the smaller twin room, spreading her stuffed animals across both beds to establish territory. I did not argue. I was too busy standing on the terrace with a cup of tea made from a stash we'd brought from home, because I am that person, watching the light change over the hills and feeling something in my shoulders finally let go.

That first evening we walked to the nearest village, barely twenty minutes down the lane, and ate pasta that tasted like someone cared deeply about it. The sort of simple, good food Emilia Romagna does without making a fuss. We came back in the dark, the seven-year-old between us holding both our hands, and I thought about how I'd panicked over the wrong turn, the lost twenty minutes, the staring man in the olive grove. How I'd let it feel like disaster when really it was just part of arriving somewhere properly, the slightly chaotic bit before the calm sets in.

Back at the house, Dave lit the wood-burning stove while I found blankets. We sat with our feet up, tired in the best way, not talking much, just being there. The fire crackled. Somewhere an owl did that thing owls do. And I decided that getting slightly lost, that moment of ridiculous tension in a Fiat Panda surrounded by judgmental sheep, was probably exactly what we needed to notice how good this felt when we finally got it right.