I should have known the holiday had truly begun when my phone decided to reroute us through what I can only describe as a goat track somewhere north of Rome. We'd flown into Fiumicino, picked up a hire car that smelled faintly of pine air freshener and regret, and set off towards the Lazio countryside with the sort of blind optimism that only a family of four possessed of snacks and a playlist can muster.

The sat-nav, in its infinite wisdom, sent us winding through hills that grew progressively greener and more implausibly beautiful, past olive groves that looked like they'd been planted by Romans with nothing but time on their hands. My wife, Sarah, navigated from the passenger seat while our two children, aged nine and twelve, debated whether Italy even had motorways or if we'd accidentally travelled back to some pre-industrial era. I kept my eyes fixed on the road, which narrowed with each passing kilometre until I found myself praying we wouldn't meet a tractor coming the other way.

The mishap, when it came, was entirely my own fault. We'd stopped at a small alimentari in a village I couldn't now name if you paid me, and I'd purchased what I believed to be a modest wheel of pecorino. In my enthusiasm, I wedged it into the footwell behind my seat, then promptly forgot about it entirely. It was only when we arrived at the property, bouncing down a gravel track lined with cypress trees, that I reversed slightly too sharply and heard the unmistakable crunch of cheese meeting car interior. The smell, I discovered upon investigation, was already developing what I can only call character.

The property itself, when we finally extracted ourselves from the vehicle and the cheese incident, stopped us all in our tracks. It sat among rolling hills with views that seemed almost aggressively picturesque, the sort of scene that makes you suspicious of whether real life is allowed to look this way. A stone farmhouse with terracotta roof tiles and shutters that had faded to that particular powder blue you only seem to find in Italy. The garden sloped away towards a pool that caught the afternoon light and held it like something precious.

Inside, the rooms were cool and simply furnished, with terracotta floors that felt deliciously against bare feet after hours in a hot car. The kitchen had an old wooden table that immediately became command central for our stay, covered within hours in maps, half-eaten breadsticks, and the various stones and interesting leaves the children had begun collecting. I found myself standing at the sink that first evening, washing tomatoes we'd bought from a farm just down the lane, watching swallows dart about the garden as the light turned golden and then rose-coloured and then something deeper altogether.

What struck me most, I think, was the quiet. Not silence exactly, because there were birds and distant dogs and the occasional tractor, but a kind of spaciousness in the sound that made my usual mental chatter seem suddenly optional. I caught myself, cheese catastrophe notwithstanding, feeling something loosen in my chest that I hadn't realised had been tight.

We ate outside that first night, at a table on the terrace, picking at bread and olive oil and the surviving portions of my ruined pecorino. The children, miraculously, weren't bickering. Sarah was laughing at something I'd said, though I couldn't now tell you what. Above us, the sky did that thing it does in the countryside, where the stars seem to multiply simply because they can.

I think I understood then, with the sort of clarity that only arrives uninvited, that this was why we'd come. Not for any particular activity or sight, but for the chance to be together in a place that asked nothing of us except our presence. The cheese, I decided, could be cleaned up tomorrow. Some things, after all, keep perfectly well until you're ready for them.