The satnav had been insisting we were three minutes from the property for the best part of twenty minutes, which should have been my first clue that this holiday was going to involve a certain amount of cheerful chaos. We had already survived the drive from Turin airport, during which my youngest managed to drop an entire packet of wine gums down the gap between the car seats, and my partner had developed a passionate hatred for Italian roundabouts that I suspect will last a lifetime.

Then came the mishap. The property was down a narrow lane, the sort that makes you breathe in even though you are inside a vehicle, and I spotted what I thought was the entrance. I swung the car in with the confidence of a man who has absolutely no idea what he is doing. The gravel crunched. A dog barked somewhere in the distance. And then I realised I had driven into the neighbour's courtyard, where an elderly gentleman in a flat cap was standing beside his vegetable patch looking at me with the kind of expression that suggested this was not the first time a British tourist had made this exact mistake.

I reversed out with what I hoped was apologetic body language, which is difficult to convey through rear windscreen glass, and found the actual entrance twenty metres further on. The proper gates opened onto a gravel drive that curved through a garden of lavender and rosemary, and there was the house itself: a proper Piedmontese farmhouse, all warm stone and green shutters, with a covered terrace that looked out towards vineyards rolling away into the hazy distance.

The key was in a lockbox, and I managed to open it on the third attempt, by which point the neighbour's dog had stopped barking and presumably gone back to more productive activities. Stepping inside, the first thing that struck me was the smell of old wood and something faintly herby, perhaps dried basil left in a kitchen drawer from the previous guests. The floors were terracotta tiles, cool underfoot, and the living room had beams across the ceiling that looked original enough to have witnessed several centuries of local history.

The kitchen was the heart of it, as these places always are: a proper cooker, a wooden table that seated six comfortably, and French doors that opened onto that terrace. I could already picture mornings out there with coffee and the bread we would fetch from the bakery in town, watching the mist lift from the vines. My children had shot upstairs to claim bedrooms, and the sound of their footsteps on the wooden floors echoed in a way that made the place feel genuinely spacious rather than merely large.

I poured myself a glass of water from the tap, which tasted of the local hills in a way that bottled water never manages, and stepped back outside. The neighbour had vanished, presumably to tell his wife about the idiot in the hire car, and the afternoon sun was warm on my face. Somewhere in the distance, a church bell marked the hour. I had driven into the wrong garden, misjudged every roundabout between here and Turin, and would almost certainly burn the first attempt at pasta on that excellent cooker. But standing there, with the smell of lavender and the soft buzz of insects in the hedgerow, I felt the particular relief that comes from knowing you have absolutely nothing urgent to do for the next week.