I have never been more grateful for a sat nav's patience than during the final hour to Lago d'Orta Arto'. Somewhere near Omegna, convinced I knew a shortcut, I found myself threading a hire Fiat up what I can only describe as a goat's idea of a road. The sat nav simply said "turn around when possible" in that calm, disappointed tone, like a parent who has seen this sort of thing before. I turned around when possible. It took twenty minutes and one extremely unimpressed local in a three-wheeled truck who had to reverse fifty metres uphill so I could pass. He waved cheerfully enough, though I suspect the gesture lost something in translation.

The property itself sits above Orta San Giulio, and my first proper look came after that humbling approach, through iron gates that creaked with theatrical purpose. The garden tumbles down the hillside in that slightly ungoverned Italian way, all lavender and terracotta and a lemon tree that has clearly never been told it is technically out of its climate zone. I stood there with my ridiculous wheelie case, still smelling of airport and panic, and a woman appeared from behind a hedge with secateurs and an expression of mild curiosity.

This was Elena, who I later learned has managed the property for her cousin for twelve years. She spoke English in the manner of someone who has acquired it entirely from elderly BBC radio broadcasts, all "I daresay" and "one finds." She was clipping something she called "the rebellious wisteria" and within five minutes had established that I was unmarried, inadequately supplied with proper walking shoes, and almost certainly going to overcook the pasta if left unsupervised. She said this not unkindly, but as one states meteorological facts.

She led me up to the terrace, where the lake appeared in sections between cypress trees, that particular milky blue that makes you understand why people paint things. I made some obvious remark about the view. Elena nodded, then told me that the previous guests had been Dutch and had complained about church bells. "One finds bells," she said, with the weight of someone who had found bells at six in the morning for six decades.

The keys came with a tour that was less about the property and more about local characters I absolutely must meet. There was Signor Bianchi at the alimentari in Miasino, who would try to sell me truffle paste I did not need. There was the boatman to Isola San Giulio who told stories that were "ninety percent invention, but the good ninety percent." There was her own husband, Marco, who fished the lake and refused to eat any fish from it, "on principle, though he cannot articulate which principle."

I was still absorbing this when a man emerged from the neighbouring olive grove with a ladder and a dog that appeared to be part badger. This was Marco himself, it transpired, though the ladder was not his. It belonged to "the German," a retired engineer from Munich who had bought the ruin next door and was restoring it with Germanic precision and Italian permits, a combination Elena described as "a situation." Marco spoke no English but communicated through elaborate shrugs and occasional bilingual profanity that required no translation. He examined my hire car with the expression of a man who had seen many hire cars arrive and fewer depart in acceptable condition.

By evening I had been supplied with a bottle of local Nebbiolo, strict instructions about the boiler's moods, and an invitation to Elena's sister's bar in Orta San Giulio, where apparently someone played accordion on Thursdays "whether one requests it or not." I sat on that terrace as the light went, listening to Marco argue with the German about ladder ownership in a mixture of Italian and Bavarian that neither seemed to find remarkable, and I thought about how I had arrived that morning convinced I was simply renting a house with a view.

What I had stumbled into, of course, was something else entirely: a small, functioning civilisation with its own feuds, alliances, and running jokes, and I was now a minor character in it for a week. The goat road had been an initiation. The three-wheeled truck driver, I decided, had probably been in on it. I poured more wine and waited for whatever Thursday would bring, accordion and all.