I have never been so pleased to see a wooden gate in my life. Three hours after leaving Venice Marco Polo, two wrong turns past Udine, and one spectacular argument with a sat nav that insisted our holiday cottage was in the middle of a river, we finally crunched up the gravel drive to Lauco in the Dolomiti Friulane. I was driving, my wife was navigating, and our seven-year-old was conducting a forensic investigation into how many crisps had fallen down the back seat. Spoiler: dozens.

The mishap, because there is always one with us, happened just outside Ampezzo. I had stopped for petrol and, in my finest holiday optimism, decided I could manage the remaining distance without another loo break. Reader, I could not. By the time we reached the turning for the village of Lauco, I was doing that peculiar seated dance familiar to all parents who have misjudged their fluid intake. My wife found this hilarious. I found it character-building. The child remained oblivious, now deeply invested in a packet of Haribo.

But then you arrive, and the nonsense falls away. The cottage sat among meadows with the proper jaggedness of the Friulane mountains behind it, not the polite Alps of postcards but something wilder and more interesting. Ours had that particular stillness you only get in places where the loudest sound is a cowbell or your own breathing. I stood there with my pathetic little suitcase, still slightly desperate for the facilities, and felt that lovely shift from "travelling" to "being somewhere."

The owners had left a bottle of local wine and some grissini that our daughter demolished before I could explain they were meant to last the week. The kitchen had that pleasing solidity of Italian country furniture, nothing fancy, everything purposeful. I pottered about opening cupboards with the pointless satisfaction of a man who has no intention of cooking anything complex. There was a fireplace I immediately imagined us using, though we had arrived in September warmth and would probably never light it. The fantasy matters, though.

What struck me was how quickly we slowed down. Not the performative slowing of digital detox holidays, but something more genuine. My daughter discovered a hammock and spent twenty minutes attempting to get into it with the graceless determination of a seal. My wife walked the perimeter with that assessing look women have when they are deciding where the washing line should go. I found a wooden chair on the terrace and sat in it improperly, legs stretched out, feeling faintly guilty about doing nothing.

The village itself, when we eventually wandered down, was the sort of place where an elderly gentleman will stop his Fiat to have a conversation with another elderly gentleman, and nobody behind them honks. There is a bar, a proper one with coffee and local gossip, and a small shop where we bought cheese that tasted of the actual meadow we had driven through. I attempted some Italian. The shopkeeper was kind about it.

That first evening, we ate outside as the light went soft and the mountains turned that particular blue they do before dark. The child fell asleep at the table, face down on a bread roll. My wife and I finished the wine. We talked about nothing much, which is the best kind of talking after months of talking about everything too much.

I keep thinking about that wooden gate, and the particular crunch of gravel under tyres, and the feeling of something uncomplicated beginning.