I have never been brilliant with directions, so it will surprise no one that I managed to get us spectacularly lost somewhere between Milan Malpensa and Luino. The sat nav had a meltdown, my partner was doing that patient breathing thing, and I somehow led us down a single-track road that appeared to serve exclusively goats and existential dread. Forty minutes of reversing and some creative Italian hand gestures later, we finally spotted the lake glimmering through the trees, and I felt something close to relief mixed with mild humiliation.

We were visiting in late October, which I now realise was a deliberate choice that shaped everything about the trip, though I had not fully thought it through at the time. The summer crowds had vanished like they had never existed. The car parks were half-empty, the gelato queues non-existent, and there was a particular quality to the light that made even my terrible photography look almost artistic. The air carried that distinctive autumn smell of lake water cooling down, woodsmoke from distant chimneys, and something faintly herbal from the hillside vegetation preparing for winter.

Arriving at the property in Luino itself felt like stepping into someone else's well-organised life. The place had that satisfying click of a door closing properly, the weight of decent towels, a kitchen that actually encouraged cooking rather than defeated it. I immediately opened every cupboard, as one does, and was disproportionately pleased by the presence of a proper moka pot. My partner pointed out that I do not even drink coffee, which is true, but I found the authenticity comforting somehow.

The balcony became our immediate obsession. October evenings here demand a certain approach. You cannot simply wander out in a t-shirt expecting the Mediterranean fantasy. I had packed one fleece, worn it constantly, and still felt smug about my foresight every time the wind came down from the mountains. We sat wrapped in blankets with a bottle of local Nebbiolo, watching the lake turn from grey-green to silver to something approaching black, and the whole performance felt stolen somehow, like we had cheated the system by coming when nobody else wanted to.

The town itself was operating at what I can only describe as a seasonal honesty. The tourist restaurants had slimmed down their menus to what locals actually wanted to eat. The ferries were running reduced schedules, which forced a certain slowness upon us that summer visitors probably never experience. I found myself talking to shopkeepers who had time to talk back, recommending particular walking routes based on which leaves were turning best that week. One elderly man in a hardware shop spent ten minutes explaining why November would be even better, which I suspect was partly kindness and partly him wondering why anyone came in October at all.

There was a morning drizzle that lasted precisely three hours, and rather than ruining anything, it simply relocated us to a cafe near the harbour where we ate pastries and watched a fisherman mend nets with the kind of concentration I have never applied to anything in my life. The seasonal gloom outside made the warmth inside feel earned.

I keep thinking about that goat road now, and how getting lost in autumn meant golden leaves rather than summer dust, and how my navigational incompetence somehow delivered us to exactly the right version of this place for who we are in this particular moment of our lives, which sounds unnecessarily philosophical but there it is.