The drive from Rome should have taken about two and a half hours, but I'd made it nearly four by the time I spotted the stone walls of Gradoli rising above the volcanic hills. This was entirely down to my steadfast refusal to use the sat nav after it tried to send me down what turned out to be a farmer's driveway, complete with an extremely unimpressed sheepdog and a gentleman in overalls who waved his arms with the kind of enthusiasm that transcends language barriers. I smiled, waved back, and promptly turned onto a road that I was fairly certain did not exist on any map.

That is how I found the olive grove. Not the famous ones, mind you, but a small terraced plot clinging to a slope, where an elderly chap was pruning trees with the patience of someone who has never once in his life checked a watch. He didn't speak English, and my Italian extends to ordering coffee and apologising profusely, but he gestured for me to stop. Ten minutes later I was drinking something from a plastic cup that tasted of liquorice and regret, staring out over Lake Bolsena shimmering in the distance. I never learned what it was called. I suspect that was for the best.

The property itself, when I finally located it down a lane that narrowed until my wing mirrors were practically brushing the stone walls, revealed itself in stages. First the iron gate, slightly crooked. Then a courtyard where a cat regarded me with the weary tolerance of someone who has seen many lost Englishmen arrive in hire cars. The building was proper old stone, the sort that stays cool even when the afternoon sun is doing its worst, and I spent a good five minutes just standing in the doorway letting the silence settle around me.

I had not planned to walk anywhere that first evening. The intention was a shower, perhaps a tentative exploration of the kitchen, and an early night with the book I'd optimistically packed. But the village above called out, or perhaps that was just my stomach, and I found myself climbing the steep lane without any particular destination. Gradoli does not announce itself. It accumulates. One moment you're between walls, the next you're in a small piazza where three old boys are playing cards with the intensity of international poker champions. They ignored me completely, which I took as a sign of acceptance.

The bakery I found by following my nose down an alley that looked like it led nowhere useful. The woman inside had already closed the till, but she sold me two slices of something savoury and still warm from the oven, waving away my attempt at exact change. I ate them sitting on a low wall, watching the light fade over the lake and wondering how many times I'd driven past places like this on proper roads, in a hurry to be somewhere else.

The mishap with the sat nav had cost me time and a fair bit of dignity. But standing there with pastry flakes on my shirt and that peculiar Italian half-light everywhere, I couldn't bring myself to regret it. Some things you only find when your technology fails you and your pride takes a minor bruising. The hidden corners of a place like this don't present themselves to the efficiently routed. They wait for the stubborn, the slightly foolish, the ones who turn down impossible lanes because the alternative is admitting a machine was right.

I went back to the property in darkness, guided by the glow of windows and the distant sound of someone practicing the accordion with more enthusiasm than skill. The cat was still in the courtyard. It let me pass without comment.