I have never been brilliant with directions, so the fact I ended up driving down what I can only describe as a goat track rather than the actual road to our holiday cottage should surprise absolutely no one. My partner sat in the passenger seat making that particular face, you know the one, half amusement and half despair, while the kids in the back had already started a game of who could spot the most olive trees. We were somewhere in northern Lazio, supposedly near Ischia di Castro, and I had just added twenty minutes to our journey by following a sign that looked official but was almost certainly meant for tractors.

The proper road, when we finally found it, wound through gentle hills patched with woodland and the occasional vineyard. Proper countryside, the sort that makes you slow down without meaning to. We passed through a tiny village, barely more than a cluster of houses and a bar with a faded awning, and then the sat nav made a noise like it had given up on us entirely and announced we had arrived.

The cottage sat at the end of a gravel track, surrounded by enough green space that my youngest immediately demanded to know if we could get a football out of the boot. It was one of those solid, unpretentious buildings that look like they have been there forever and will probably outlast most modern architecture. Terracotta roof, warm stone walls, nothing fancy but everything right. I stood there with my ridiculous oversized suitcase, the one I always overpack, feeling that particular relief of finally being somewhere that expects nothing of you.

The key was where the owner said it would be, in a little metal box that required the sort of code I had written on my phone and then promptly forgotten. Three attempts later, the door swung open and that warm, slightly closed-up smell of a holiday home hit us. You know the one, a bit of wood polish, a hint of last week's lavender, something cooking-adjacent from the neighbouring farmhouse. It smelled like the beginning of doing very little indeed.

I made the traditional mistake of the enthusiastic holidaymaker and immediately tried to open every door and window simultaneously, convinced fresh air was the priority. This led to me trapping my own finger in a shutter catch, which my family found considerably more entertaining than I did. There was some blood, quite a lot of dramatic language, and then my partner sensibly made tea while I sat on the terrace feeling sorry for myself and watching the light change across the valley.

The terrace, I should say, was where the cottage came properly into its own. Covered, shady, with a table big enough for lazy lunches and those evening sessions where nobody wants to move because the wine is open and the temperature has dropped to something bearable. Beyond it, the garden sloped away to a fence line of trees, and somewhere in the middle distance a dog barked at nothing in particular. The pool glinted turquoise, completely irresistible to children who had been cooped up in a car for hours.

By the time I had recovered from my shutter-related humiliation, the kids were already in their swimming things despite my protestations about unpacking first. My partner had that look of peaceful surrender, the one that says we are on holiday now and normal rules do not apply. I made a second cup of tea, found a biscuit tin that actually contained biscuits, and sat on that terrace with my feet up.

The sun moved lower, the shadows lengthened, and somewhere a church bell rang the hour in that unhurried way Italian church bells have. I thought about dinner, decided against thinking too hard, and made a mental note to find the local shop in the morning. For now, there was nothing that needed doing beyond being here, being still, and probably applying another plaster to my finger. Some arrivals are dramatic and some are simply right, and despite my best efforts at complicating ours, this one settled into being exactly what we needed.