The Sat-Nav to Sanity: My Week of Doing Not Very Much in Tremosine

I have learned that there are two types of people in this world: those who trust their satellite navigation implicitly, and those who have driven a hire car up a goat track in the mountains above Lake Garda. I now belong, rather firmly, to the second camp. The turn looked perfectly innocent on the screen. A little road, certainly, but this was Italy, and Italian roads are characterful, are they not? What followed was twenty minutes of white-knuckled prayer, one angry goat, and a local farmer who found the whole spectacle so amusing he actually applauded when I finally reversed back down to civilisation. My partner sat in silence, clutching the door handle, having made the fatal error of letting me navigate. We arrived at Voiandes Tremosine rather later than planned, considerably sweatier, and in desperate need of something cold and alcoholic.

The property sits high above the western shore of Lake Garda, in that glorious hinterland where the lake's bustle fades and the mountains take over. Tremosine is not a place for rushing, I discovered. It is a place for forgetting that rushing was ever invented. The house itself was simple and unpretentious, with a terrace that looked out over olive groves and down towards the water, distant enough to glimmer rather than demand attention. I stood there with my recovery drink, still slightly trembling from the drive, and felt the particular satisfaction of having arrived somewhere that does not require you to be anywhere else.

We did very little that first afternoon, which set the tone rather perfectly for the week. There is an art to purposeful idleness that I had forgotten, and Tremosine reteaches it without instruction. I read on the terrace until the light went, moving only to fetch more water or occasionally to point at a bird I could not identify. My partner dozed. The goat track trauma receded. Somewhere below, a church bell marked time in a manner that felt entirely optional.

The days that followed established a rhythm of magnificent laziness. Mornings began slowly, with coffee and whatever we had gathered from the small shop in Pieve, the village proper, a short wander up the lane. We would take bread and cheese and tomatoes back to the terrace, eating breakfast at a pace that would horrify anyone with a commute. The tomatoes, incidentally, were ridiculous. I have never understood why British tomatoes taste of resignation until I ate one in Italy that tasted of actual tomato. I became briefly evangelical about this, though my partner suggested I was perhaps over-invested in fruit.

We walked, but never far. There is a path through the olive groves that leads to a viewpoint, maybe twenty minutes, where you can see the lake properly and watch the ferries crawling between towns you have no intention of visiting. We took this walk most days, always with a book, always with the intention of reading rather than arriving anywhere. Sometimes we read. Sometimes we simply sat and watched the light change on the mountains opposite, which is itself a perfectly respectable activity that I would recommend to anyone.

The afternoons were for deeper laziness. The property had a small pool, and I became devoted to it with the fervour of a convert. There is something wonderfully absurd about floating in warm water with a paperback held above your face, occasionally lowering it to confirm that yes, the mountains are still there, yes, the sky is still blue, yes, nothing whatsoever requires your attention. I finished three books I had been carrying around unread for months. I cannot tell you what any of them were about, which I consider a success.

Evenings brought gentle exploration of the immediate area. We found a trattoria in Campione, barely three miles down the hill, where the owner explained the menu with the patience of someone accustomed to foreigners who have done nothing all day and are slightly overwhelmed by choice. We ate lake fish and drank local wine and walked back slowly in darkness that smelled of jasmine and warm stone. Another evening we simply cooked at the house, making something basic from the few ingredients we had gathered, eating on the terrace as the swallows performed their elaborate evening routines above us.

I had intended to be reflective about this holiday, to come back with some insight about pace or presence or the Italian way of life. The truth is simpler and slightly embarrassing: I enjoyed doing almost nothing, and I was good at it by the end. The goat track became a comic story rather than a trauma. The books were absorbed rather than studied. The days passed in a blur of sunlight and olive oil and occasional, welcome sleep.

On our final morning, I stood on the terrace with my coffee and watched the mist lifting from the lake below. My partner was packing, making the familiar sounds of someone who believes that leaving on time matters. I felt no particular wisdom, only a profound gratitude for a week in which achievement was measured in chapters read, naps taken, and meals eaten slowly enough to taste. The farmer who had applauded my driving would never know what he started. The goat, I assume, has forgotten entirely. I drove down the proper road when we left, following my partner's explicit instructions, already plotting my return to purposeful idleness.