I should have known the holiday was going to be eventful when I put the sat nav postcode into my phone and it tried to send me up what looked like a goat track. Three hours of driving from Milan Malpensa, my partner dozing in the passenger seat, the kids in the back asking if we were there yet for the forty-seventh time, and I was convinced I'd ruined everything before we'd even arrived. The goat track turned out to be someone's driveway. A very angry someone's driveway, if the waving arms and barking dog were anything to go by. We reversed in what I can only describe as a twelve-point turn while the kids found this absolutely hilarious and my dignity quietly left the vehicle.

Proper directions found, we finally rolled into Villanuova sul Clisi proper, and something in my shoulders unclenched for the first time since baggage reclaim. The village sits in that lovely crease of Lombardy where Lake Garda's influence seeps inland, all olive groves and mild air and the sort of light that makes everything look slightly golden. Our cottage, tucked down a lane just off the main road, announced itself with a wrought-iron gate that squeaked like a disgruntled mouse and a garden that had clearly been loved into submission by someone with excellent taste in lavender.

The key was exactly where the property notes said it would be, which felt like a small miracle given my navigational performance. I fumbled with the lock while my youngest announced she needed the loo with the urgency only a seven-year-old can muster. The door swung open onto terracotta tiles and that particular coolness of thick stone walls, the kind that makes you exhale without meaning to. The kids shot past me, claiming bedrooms with the territorial instinct of cats, while I stood in the kitchen doorway and just looked.

It was one of those proper Italian kitchens, not the glossy sort you see in magazines, but the working kind with a slightly wonky table that wobbled until you folded a bit of paper under the leg, and windows that opened outward to catch any breeze going. Someone had left a bowl of lemons on the counter, actual lemons from the tree I could see in the garden, and I had one of those moments where you think, yes, this is exactly why we do this to ourselves. The chaos of budget airlines, the hire car upgrade we absolutely didn't need, my spectacular wrong turn into a stranger's life - all of it dissolved into lemon-scented quiet.

My partner appeared from exploring upstairs, looking smug in that way he does when he's been right about something. He'd picked this place, you see, while I'd been lobbying for somewhere more obviously on the lake itself. "Told you," he said, which is his worst habit. I couldn't even be annoyed. The upstairs had that lovely unevenness of old buildings, floors that dip slightly in the middle, a bathroom with a shower that apparently had proper water pressure, which anyone who's done self-catering in rural Italy knows is not guaranteed.

By evening we'd established our pattern without even discussing it. I unpacked with the methodical pleasure I always pretend not to enjoy, the kids discovered the pool and became temporarily amphibious, and my partner walked to the village bakery for bread that was still warm. We ate outside as the light faded, something simple with tomatoes and mozzarella, and I watched a gecko make its tentative way up the wall behind him. The wrong turn felt like it had happened to someone else, some other frazzled dad in some other hire car.

That's the thing about these cottage holidays, I've realised. The place itself does half the work of slowing you down. You can't rush a squeaky gate or a wobbly table or bread that needs walking to. You just have to arrive, mishaps and all, and let it hold you for a while.