I have always believed that the best family holidays begin with a small disaster, and our trip to MonteBuono in the Lazio countryside did not disappoint. We had been driving from Rome Fiumicino for the best part of two hours, the kids squabbling over who had eaten the last Haribo, when I confidently announced we were "practically there." My phone, still convinced we were in Britain, had other ideas. It directed us down a gravel track so narrow that brambles scratched both wing mirrors simultaneously, a neat trick I had not thought possible. Ten minutes of reversing later, with my wife giving me that particular look she reserves for my navigation skills, we emerged at a dead end facing an extremely unimpressed goat.

The actual approach to MonteBuono, when we finally found it, could not have been more different. You wind through gentle hills patched with olive groves and vineyards, the kind of landscape that makes you want to open the windows and breathe dramatically. The house sits among its own grounds, a proper stone farmhouse with that slightly weathered look that no amount of British DIY could ever authentically replicate. I pulled up feeling rather pleased with myself, as if I had personally arranged the cypress trees and the distant church bell that happened to ring at that exact moment.

First impressions matter, and MonteBuono makes a cracking one. The owner had left the key in a rusted metal box secured with a combination lock, the sort of thing that feels pleasingly rustic until you realise you have forgotten the code. Cue several minutes of me trying variations of our wedding anniversary while the kids asked increasingly pointed questions about my competence. The door swung open eventually, and we stepped into cool flagstone floors and thick walls that smelled faintly of lavender and old wood.

The kitchen won me over immediately. Not one of those holiday rentals where you open a cupboard and find a single bent fork and a tin opener from 1973. Proper cooking pots, a decent knife that actually cut things, and a table big enough for all of us to sit around without someone getting an elbow in their ribs. My daughter declared the fireplace "massive and a bit scary," which I took as high praise. The sitting area had those deep sofas that swallow you whole, the kind you sink into with a book and emerge from two hours later slightly confused about what year it is.

Outside, a covered terrace ran along the front of the house, furnished with a long wooden table where we would later eat most of our meals. Beyond that lay the pool, rectangular and straightforward, nothing flashy, which suited us perfectly. The children were in it within four minutes of arrival despite my warnings about letting lunch settle. I stood on the edge with a cup of tea, watching them shriek about the temperature, and felt something in my shoulders release that had been tight since approximately March 2019.

What struck me most that first afternoon was the quiet. Not silence exactly, there were cicadas and distant tractors and the occasional enthusiastic dog, but a kind of spaciousness in the sound. No traffic hum, no neighbour's television bleeding through walls. I found myself speaking more softly without meaning to, as if the place demanded a certain gentleness. My wife noticed too, though she put it more bluntly: "You've stopped shouting at the sat nav," she said. "Progress."

By evening we had unpacked with the chaotic efficiency that family holidays demand, discovered the local shop in the nearby village for essentials, and eaten bread and cheese on the terrace as the light faded. The children, exhausted by swimming and fresh air, actually asked to go to bed. I sat outside with a glass of something local and red, watching bats dart above the olive trees, and reflected that perhaps getting lost with that goat had been exactly the right start after all. Some journeys need a wrong turn to make you properly grateful for arriving.