I have always believed that the best holidays begin with a minor disaster, and our trip to Sarnico did not disappoint. We had flown into Milan Bergamo, picked up a hire car that smelled faintly of parmesan and regret, and set off toward Lake Iseo with the sort of confidence that only comes from having glanced at Google Maps precisely once. Within twenty minutes we were hopelessly lost somewhere near a roundabout that seemed to exist outside normal geometry. My partner was navigating, I was driving, and we were both pretending the other was entirely to blame. Three circuits later, we spotted a petrol station, bought an overpriced map from a man who looked deeply unimpressed, and finally found our way to the lakeside.

The property sat up a gentle slope from the water, a proper Italian villa affair with terracotta roof tiles and shutters that had seen a few decades of sunshine. I reversed up the gravel drive with the sort of caution normally reserved for bomb disposal, still rattled from the roundabout trauma, and promptly clipped a potted olive tree. It wobbled dramatically but stayed upright. I decided this counted as success.

Stepping inside, the first thing that struck me was the cool. After the sticky car journey, the thick stone walls felt like stepping into a different season entirely. The kitchen opened onto a terrace with views straight across the lake, and I will confess that I stood there like a complete lemon for a good two minutes, just blinking in the light off the water. The place had that particular smell of old wood and clean linen, with something faintly citrus underneath. My partner found the coffee maker and immediately declared we were never leaving.

We did leave, briefly, that first evening. Sarnico itself is a ten-minute wander downhill, a proper little Lombard town with a promenade where elderly men in excellent hats stroll about looking important. We found a trattoria near the water, ate pasta with perch from the lake, and drank local Franciacorta that cost less than a mediocre bottle of Prosecco back home. I became briefly philosophical after the second glass, remarking that perhaps getting lost was somehow meant to happen, that the journey was the destination, and other such nonsense. My partner reminded me I had nearly killed an olive tree. Fair enough.

The days that followed settled into a rhythm so lazy it barely qualified as rhythm at all. Mornings began on that terrace with coffee and nothing much planned. I had brought three books and finished two of them, which tells you everything about my usual reading pace versus my holiday reading pace. The middle of the day we spent doing very little in the sunshine, moving between the terrace, a small garden with a hammock that creaked reassuringly, and occasional dips in the lake when the heat became persuasive rather than merely pleasant.

There was a small beach near the town, nothing organised or commercial, just pebbles and clear water and Italian families who had clearly been doing this for generations. We joined them with our inadequate British preparation, no proper cooler box or elaborate picnic, just a bottle of water and some apricots from the market. Nobody seemed to mind. I floated on my back and looked at the mountains and thought about how rarely I looked at anything properly back home.

Some afternoons we walked along the lake path toward Predore, twenty minutes of gentle strolling with the water on one side and villas hidden behind oleander bushes on the other. We never made it all the way, always finding some excuse to turn back. A promising-looking cafe, a sudden desire for a swim, the simple fact that we had left a good book on the terrace. This became a running joke, our failed expedition, though honestly I think we both preferred the not-arriving.

Evenings we cooked simple things from the market in Sarnico, tomatoes that actually tasted of something, mozzarella still warm, bread with a proper crust. We ate late, as one does, with the shutters open and the lake going dark beyond. Once, attempting to be helpful, I managed to set the smoke alarm off with some overenthusiastic garlic bread. The neighbours, visible on their own terrace, raised their glasses in what I choose to believe was solidarity.

On our last morning I sat with coffee and watched a heron work its way along the shoreline, patient as only herons can be. I thought about the roundabout, the olive tree, the various small failures that had somehow become the texture of the holiday itself. There is something to be said for doing very little, for allowing a place to simply be around you rather than demanding constant entertainment from it. I am not naturally good at this, inclined as I am towards packing too much in, towards justifying a trip with activity. Sarnico offered no such pressure. The lake was there, the sunshine was there, and that was sufficient.

We packed with the reluctance of people who have accidentally found exactly what they needed. The drive back to Bergamo was uneventful, which felt almost disappointing. I looked for our roundabout but could not find it, perhaps mercifully. At the airport, my partner observed that I had not once checked my work email, a feat of self-discipline unprecedented in our shared history. I told her the wifi had been patchy, which was not entirely true, and she smiled in a way that suggested she knew exactly what I meant.

Some holidays you come back from with stories of what you did. This one I came back from with stories of what I did not do, which turns out to be rarer and perhaps more valuable. The books read, the swims taken, the heron watched. The olive tree, I assume, still standing.