I have never been so relieved to see a sign for "Boleto" in my entire life, and that includes the time I got lost in IKEA trying to find the shortcut to the meatballs.

The journey from Milan Malpensa had started with such promise. Hire car sorted, sat nav programmed, coffee purchased from a station that charged me four euros for what tasted like warm disappointment. We were doing the classic Northern Italian Lakes family break, me and the lot of them crammed into a Fiat that smelled faintly of previous owners' sun cream. The plan was simple: wind through the hills above Lake Maggiore, arrive at our cottage, open wine, forget about work.

Simple plans are my speciality. Executing them is not.

Somewhere between Verbania and sanity, I took a wrong turn that the sat nav assured me was "scenic." Scenic, in this context, meant a single-track road clinging to a hillside, bordered by dry stone walls and the occasional goat giving me a look of profound judgment. The children had stopped asking "are we there yet" and moved on to the more existential "are we going to die." My partner was gripping the door handle with white knuckles and saying "lovely views" through gritted teeth, which is marriage code for "you absolute donut."

The mishap, when it came, was almost inevitable. I met another car coming the other way on a bend so tight it could have been a hairpin in a previous life. Reverse, I thought. How hard can reverse be? Very hard, apparently, when your left wing mirror clips a stone wall and makes a noise like a gunshot in a library. The mirror dangled there, wounded, reflecting nothing but my own stupidity. The other driver, a local man with the weathered patience of someone who has watched many tourists do exactly this, simply nodded, reversed with balletic grace, and disappeared around the corner while I sat there contemplating my life choices.

We limped the final kilometre to Madonna Del Sasso Boleto with the mirror taped up using a plaster from the first aid kit and whatever dignity I had left.

And then, rounding the final bend, there it was. The cottage sat among terraced gardens with Lake Maggiore glimmering below like someone had spilled mercury across the valley. My first thought was that I would have reversed twice as far for this view. My second was that I needed to sit down with something cold and local.

The key was in the lockbox as promised, which felt like a minor miracle given my track record that afternoon. Pushing open the door, the smell hit me immediately: that particular combination of old stone, wood polish, and somewhere in the background, the ghost of a thousand previous holidays. The living room had heavy wooden beams and furniture that looked like it had stories to tell, the sort of sturdy, unpretentious pieces that survive families like mine. The kitchen was compact but serious about its purpose, with a proper cooker and space to actually prepare food rather than just assemble snacks.

I walked straight through to the terrace, because that is what you do when you arrive somewhere like this. The garden fell away in levels, fruit trees and shrubs giving way to that view I mentioned, the one that makes you forget you were swearing at a goat twenty minutes earlier. The children had already found the bedrooms upstairs, their voices carrying that particular echo of approved spaces. My partner appeared with two glasses and a bottle of Gattinara she had spotted in a village shop, because she is the organised one and I am the one who breaks wing mirrors.

We sat there as the light changed over the lake, not saying much, which is the mark of a good arrival. The mishap had become a story already, something we would tell at dinner, embellished with the goat's increasingly disdainful expression. That is the thing about cottage holidays, I think, as I watched a ferry crawl across the water far below. They make room for the mistakes. They absorb them into the fabric of the place, into the worn steps and the creaking doors and the garden that has seen worse than a man with a taped-up mirror.

Tomorrow we would explore properly, find the local shop, perhaps brave the lakeside promenade at Stresa with its gelato and its crowds. But for that first evening, we simply existed in the space, letting the journey settle out of our bones, listening to the silence that is not quite silence when you are somewhere with cicadas and distant church bells.

I raised my glass to the goat, wherever he was, and to wrong turns that end right.