I have never been so relieved to see a village name on a road sign as I was when "Magliolo" finally appeared after six hours of driving from Turin. My partner had insisted we could do the journey in four, which might have been true had I not confidently turned onto the A10 towards Genoa instead of staying on the A6. We spent forty-five minutes in beach traffic near Savona, windows down, arguing about whether my phone or the sat nav was more wrong, while the smell of someone's burnt clutch wafted through the car. By the time we corrected course and headed inland towards the Ligurian hills, I had accepted my role as the designated wrong-turner of the relationship.

The final stretch up to Magliolo itself was where things got properly interesting. The road narrowed to something barely wider than a determined cyclist, winding through terraced olive groves that clung to the hillsides like green corduroy. I kept one eye on the sat nav and one on the crumbling edge of what I will generously call the verge, convinced we would meet a local coming the other way in a Fiat Panda with no intention of reversing. My partner, who had fallen into a smug silence after the motorway incident, suddenly announced she could see the house. I could not. What she had spotted was a terracotta roof tile glinting somewhere through the cypress trees, which turned out to belong to a neighbour's shed.

The actual property sat at the end of a steep gravel track that I reverse-into-parked with the kind of over-caution usually reserved for parallel parking outside a pub on a Saturday night. We stepped out into warm air that smelled of pine resin and something herby I later learned was wild marjoram growing in the dry stone walls. The house itself was simple stone and plaster, the sort that looks like it has been there since someone decided hills were worth inhabiting and has politely refused to make a fuss about it since. A wooden pergola covered in what I desperately hoped was grape vine shaded a small terrace with a table that wobbled slightly on the uneven tiles.

The key was where the owner said it would be, in a metal box that required the code I had written on my phone, my phone backup, and a napkin that had since been used to mop up a coffee from the motorway services. I tried three combinations before my partner produced the correct one from her wallet, where she had sensibly stored it three weeks prior. The door opened with a satisfying weight, the kind that speaks of thick walls and small windows designed against summer heat rather than winter cold.

Inside, the coolness was immediate and welcome. Terracotta floors, whitewashed walls, wooden beams that looked original and slightly wonky. The kitchen was compact in that Italian way where everything has a specific place and purpose, including a moka pot that I immediately promised myself I would master. Through the sitting room, French doors opened to a view I had not expected despite the website photos: a valley falling away below, layers of green folding into each other until they reached a distant shimmer that might have been the sea on a clearer day.

I stood there with my bag still on my shoulder, aware that my partner was already investigating the bedroom situation, and felt that particular holiday sensation of temporary ownership mixed with mild disorientation. We had arrived. I had got us lost, found again, and finally here, to this quiet spot where the only immediate sounds were a distant dog, some enthusiastic cicadas, and my own slightly elevated breathing from the altitude and the stress of the drive.

My partner appeared in the doorway holding two wine glasses she had located with the efficiency of someone who knows her priorities. "There's a village shop," she said. "Five minutes down the hill. Apparently they make their own pesto." I thought of our fridge at home, its sad jar of supermarket basil paste, and smiled. We were going to need more wine.