I should have known the holiday was off to a classic start when I confidently programmed the sat nav for Montefiascone and promptly spent twenty minutes circling a roundabout near Viterbo, arguing with my wife about whether "left" meant "immediate left" or "left at some theoretical future point." We had been on the road from Rome Fiumicino for the best part of two hours, the children had graduated from cheerful to feral, and I had just declared, with the misplaced certainty of a man who once found his way out of a car park in Croydon, that I "knew exactly where we were."

Reader, I did not.

The mishap, when it came, was almost poetic. Having finally escaped the roundabout's gravitational pull, I turned onto a promising-looking lane, gravel crunching beneath the wheels, convinced we had arrived at our cottage. I parked with a flourish, stepped out to stretch my legs, and was immediately greeted by a very large, very unimpressed dog and a farmer who appeared from nowhere to explain, in expressive Italian and increasingly theatrical gestures, that I was in his driveway, his private olive grove, and possibly his living room if I stepped any closer. My wife, still belted into the passenger seat, found this hilarious. The children, mercifully, were too absorbed in their tablets to witness their father's territorial dispute with a local canine.

Retreating with what dignity remained, we found the actual property five minutes further on, and the contrast could not have been more welcome. The cottage sat among rolling hills that seemed to fold into themselves like a well-worn blanket, the kind of landscape that makes you understand why Romans have been escaping here for centuries. A low stone wall encircled the property, bougainvillea climbing lazily over a wooden pergola near the entrance. The pool glimmered in the afternoon light, utterly deserted, which I took as personal compensation for the farmer incident.

Stepping inside, the first thing that struck me was the coolness. Thick walls, I supposed, or perhaps just the relief of being somewhere that was not a hire car with two children asking about snack schedules. The kitchen opened directly onto a covered terrace, and I could already picture evenings there, something simple on the barbecue, local wine that cost less than a London pint, the particular silence of countryside that has never needed to be quiet because it simply is.

My daughter discovered the table football in a corner and immediately challenged me to a match she would win four-nil. My son vanished to investigate the bedrooms, returning to announce that he had claimed the one with "the best hiding spot," the specifics of which he naturally refused to disclose. My wife wandered the garden, photographing lavender and what she suspected were wild herbs, though our collective botanical knowledge would not fill a postcard.

I stood on that terrace as afternoon softened toward evening, still slightly flushed from the wrong-turn episode, and felt the particular pleasure of a holiday that has not yet demanded anything of you. No itinerary, no must-see attractions within desperate driving distance, just the immediate surroundings and the promise of doing very little very well. The farmer's dog, I decided, had probably forgiven me. The farmer almost certainly had not. But here, with a glass of something local and the children temporarily harmonious, that seemed perfectly fine.

Tomorrow we might walk to Montefiascone proper, perhaps find a bakery for cornetti, wander the medieval streets slowly enough to annoy locals. For now, though, there was this terrace, that view, and the gentle satisfaction of having arrived, however circuitously, exactly where we needed to be.