I have never been a good navigator. Satnavs were invented for people like me, yet somehow I still managed to turn a straightforward drive from Rome into a three-hour tour of every back road between Lazio and Molise. My other half sat in the passenger seat with that particular expression of British restraint, the one that says "I am not angry, just profoundly disappointed in your life choices." The mishap came just outside Isernia, where I confidently followed a sign for a scenic route that turned out to be little more than a goat track with delusions of grandeur. Our hire car, a Fiat 500 that had done nothing to deserve this treatment, bottomed out on a rock with a crunch that made my wallet wince in anticipation.

By the time we limped into San Massimo, I was ready to abandon the car and possibly my driving licence. The village sits perched on a hillside in the province of Campobasso, the kind of place where time seems to have paused in about 1957 to admire the view and never quite got going again. Our holiday home, a stone house with terracotta roof tiles and wooden shutters that had clearly seen better decades, appeared through the olive trees like a promise that everything might actually be alright.

The key was where the owner said it would be, tucked behind a terracotta pot that contained what I initially thought was a decorative shrub but was in fact an extremely vigorous rosemary plant fighting a territorial dispute with a neighbouring sage. I wrestled with the front door for several minutes before realising it opened inwards, not outwards, a discovery that prompted a small sigh from behind me that spoke volumes about our marriage.

Stepping inside, the cool darkness after the bright Molise sunshine felt like walking into a different season. The house smelled of stone and old wood and something faintly herby, probably from the garden's aggressive aromatics creeping through the windows. The floors were terracotta tiles, worn smooth in the centre of each room by generations of feet. A wooden beam in the kitchen had a noticeable sag to it, the kind that makes you instinctively duck even though you are not quite tall enough to need to.

I found myself standing in the small sitting room, holding our battered suitcase and suddenly aware of how loud my own breathing sounded in the silence. No traffic noise. No neighbours audible through walls. Just the distant sound of someone, somewhere, tending to olive trees with the patience of a person who knows exactly what they are doing and has all the time in the world to do it.

The view from the bedroom window stopped my minor panic about whether I had packed enough socks. Rolling hills patched with woodland and cultivation, the odd farmhouse dotted about like scattered dice, and everywhere the silvery green of olive groves catching the afternoon light. I spotted a hawk circling lazily over a field of sunflowers that had seen better days but were putting on a brave show regardless.

My other half appeared with two glasses of local wine, sourced from a bottle in the kitchen that I suspected had been left as a welcome gift. We stood on the small terrace, which had a slight tilt that made you feel pleasantly nautical, and watched the light change over the valley. The goat track, the scratched car, my catastrophic navigation all seemed to belong to a different journey entirely. There is something humbling about arriving somewhere that has existed for centuries without any input from you, and realising that your small disasters are merely the price of admission.