I have never been so pleased to see a sat nav give up on me. We were somewhere between Ancona and the middle of nowhere, my other half insisting he knew a shortcut, when our trusty TomTom decided Cingoli simply did not exist. This from a device that once tried to direct us into a canal in Venice. Still, there we were, winding through olive groves in a hire car that smelled faintly of previous occupants' sunscreen, until a local farmer pointed us up a track that looked less like a road and more like a suggestion.

The mishap, of course, was entirely my fault. In my enthusiasm at Bristol Airport, I had packed our carefully printed directions in the hold luggage. "Who needs paper," I had declared, waving my phone about like a modern explorer. The answer, apparently, was us. The phone had died somewhere near Jesi, victim of a cheap charging cable and my inability to plan beyond lunchtime.

We arrived at the property two hours late, frazzled, and in that peculiar state of marital tension that only a hot car and poor navigation can produce. But then the gates opened, and something wonderful happened. We stopped bickering. There before us sat a proper old farmhouse, all honey-coloured stone and terracotta pots, with a pool that caught the afternoon light like a promise. The owners, Marco and Luisa, waved us in with the easy patience of people who have waited for lost Britons before. Luisa produced lemonade that tasted of actual lemons, not the chemical approximation I was used to, and Marco helped with the bags while pretending not to notice my husband's impressive collection of maps now spread across the passenger seat in defeat.

That first evening, we did almost nothing. This became the pattern, and I am not ashamed. We unpacked slowly, lazily, finding our rhythm in the way the house settled around us. The kitchen had terracotta floors that stayed cool underfoot, and doors that opened onto a terrace where we would spend most of our waking hours. I remember standing there with a glass of Verdicchio, watching swallows dart above the pool, thinking that I had spent years confusing busyness with purpose. The hills rolled away in every direction, green and gold, with Cingoli's medieval silhouette visible on its ridge. We could have driven up to explore that first night. We did not. We sat. We watched the light change. We ate bread and pecorino that Marco had left as a welcome, and tomatoes that tasted of soil and sunshine rather than supermarket regret.

The morning brought proper heat, the kind that makes ambition feel foolish. I claimed a sun lounger with the territorial instinct of a woman who has spent too many holidays in crowded English gardens. My book, started at Gatwick and abandoned during the travel chaos, finally got proper attention. It was nothing literary, some detective nonsense set in Glasgow, but in that context it felt like poetry. My husband swam slow lengths of the pool, then napped, then swam again. We spoke in fragments, comfortable silences stretching between us like the shadows of the cypress trees.

By afternoon, hunger drove us to the nearest village, barely three miles along a lane that had thankfully improved with daylight. We found a tiny alimentari where an elderly woman sold us local salami and more of that pecorino, plus figs so ripe they wept syrup. That was our exploration, our big adventure. Back to the terrace, to more reading, to watching lizards skitter across the warm stones.

I had arrived thinking I would see the Frasassi Caves, maybe drive to the coast, tick off the cultural highlights. Instead, I discovered the profound satisfaction of doing very little very well. The property asked nothing of us but presence. Each day blurred into the next in the most pleasant way: early swim, late breakfast, book by the pool, perhaps a gentle wander to the village for supplies, evening aperitivo as the hills turned purple. My husband, usually a man of itineraries, stopped checking his watch. I stopped checking my phone, partly because the signal was dreadful, mostly because I no longer cared.

On our final morning, packing with the reluctance of children leaving a party, I found those printed directions still folded in my suitcase. I laughed, showing my husband, who rolled his eyes with theatrical weariness. But we both knew that getting lost had been the making of the holiday. We had stumbled into slowness, into a rhythm we had forgotten existed. As we pulled away, sat nav functioning again, I looked back at the house one last time. Marco was already sweeping the terrace, Luisa watering her geraniums. The pool sat empty and glittering. I felt a pang not of sadness but of recognition, understanding that this was how holidays should feel, that I had been doing them wrong for years, rushing about to avoid the very thing I needed most. The TomTom directed us cleanly to the airport. I rather missed its earlier rebellion.