I have never been particularly good at reading maps, which is how I found myself reversing down a single-track road in the foothills of Friuli while a very patient local farmer waited with his tractor and what I can only describe as an expression of infinite Italian resignation. My phone had cheerfully announced we had arrived at our Sutrio holiday home approximately eight minutes prior, by which point I had already driven past the turning twice and was beginning to suspect the sat nav had developed a personal vendetta against me.

The property itself, when I finally located the correct lane and the small wooden sign half-hidden by hydrangeas, revealed itself in stages. First the stone wall, weathered to the colour of old parmesan. Then the iron gate that squeaked like a startled mouse. Then the garden, sloping gently towards a view of wooded hills that made me forget entirely about the farmer and my own questionable navigation skills. I stood there with the car door still open, one foot on the gravel, and felt that particular holiday sensation of the world slowing down whether you had planned for it or not.

The house was exactly the sort of place that rewards doing very little. A covered terrace with a wooden table that bore the honest marks of previous summers. A hammock strung between two trees that immediately became my headquarters for the week. The kitchen opened directly onto this space, so that making coffee and returning to my horizontal position required minimal effort and zero ambition. I brought three books with me and finished none of them, which I consider an absolute triumph. There is a special pleasure in reading the same paragraph three times because a lizard has caught your attention on the terrace wall, or because the afternoon light has shifted across the valley and suddenly demands to be watched instead.

Sutrio itself sits at that perfect altitude where the air feels cleaner without making you breathless. I walked into the village most mornings, a gentle twenty-minute stroll that I deliberately stretched to forty by taking the longer path past the old sawmill. The village centre is compact enough that you cannot really get lost, though I managed it once by becoming distracted by a cat sleeping in a doorway and missing my turning. There is a small bar where I ordered cappuccini with the confidence of a man who knows he will return tomorrow, and a bakery that produces crostoli so fragile they practically dissolve on contact with your tongue. I never once consulted a menu with urgency. I never once checked my watch with purpose.

The local woods provided my only real expeditions, though expedition suggests more effort than was actually involved. I found a stream one afternoon, following a path that began behind the house and wandered downhill without any particular destination in mind. I sat on a flat rock for an hour, watching water move over stones, and considered this a significant achievement. The sunlight filtered through the canopy in that specific way that makes you understand why painters keep trying to capture it and never quite succeeding.

By the fourth day I had established a routine of magnificent simplicity. Morning coffee on the terrace, perhaps a walk, perhaps not. Lunch assembled from whatever looked appealing at the village shop. Afternoon hammock occupancy with occasional page-turning. Evening aperitivo as the light softened and the hills turned from green to something approaching gold. I spoke to almost no one beyond basic pleasantries, and found this restorative rather than lonely.

On my final morning I packed with the reluctance of someone who has remembered how to be still and suspects modern life will make him forget again. The farmer passed me on the lane as I departed, raising one finger from his steering wheel in what I chose to interpret as forgiveness, or perhaps recognition of a fellow traveller who had also found his own pace. I drove away slowly, deliberately, already planning which book I would not finish on my return.