I have never been so pleased to see a gravel driveway in all my life. Twelve hours after leaving Manchester, having endured a delayed flight to Turin, a rental car that smelled faintly of wet dog, and one spectacularly wrong turn that took us through what I am fairly certain was somebody's vineyard, we finally crunched up to the Marsaglia. I was ready to weep with relief. Then I opened the car door, stepped straight into a flowerbed, and twisted my ankle on a decorative stone that I am convinced had been lying in wait for precisely this moment.

My partner found this hilarious, naturally. There I was, making a dramatic entrance worthy of a Jane Austen heroine, arms windmilling, dignity scattering across the herb garden like startled sparrows. A lavender bush broke my fall, which meant I spent my first five minutes at the property smelling like a provincial chemist's shop and plucking purple petals from my hair. Welcome to Piedmont.

The house itself, once I hobbled close enough to appreciate it, immediately made the journey feel worthwhile. It is one of those solid stone farmhouses that looks as though it has been growing out of the hillside for centuries, which I suppose it more or less has. The sort of place where you half expect to find a grandmother in a black dress tending tomatoes and offering unsolicited opinions about your life choices. Instead we found silence, golden evening light, and the distant clanging of what I later learned was a sheep bell from the neighbouring pasture.

Our host had left the key in a ceramic pot beside the door, alongside a handwritten note and a bottle of local Dolcetto. I appreciated the thought, though my hands were still shaking slightly from the flowerbed incident and I very nearly dropped the bottle on the stone threshold. That would have been the perfect end to a perfect arrival. The note welcomed us in English that was considerably better than my Italian, which I had been practising from an app and which had so far only succeeded in confusing a petrol station attendant near Alba.

Stepping inside, the first thing that struck me was the smell. Old wood, dried herbs, and something else I could not quite place - beeswax, perhaps, or simply the accumulated patience of a house that has watched generations come and go. The floors were terracotta tiles, uneven in that deliberate way that makes you watch your step, which given recent events seemed advisable. The kitchen was vast and clearly designed for people who take cooking seriously, with copper pots hanging like ceremonial armour and a fireplace you could practically stand inside. I immediately felt guilty about the packet of fusilli and jar of pesto I had optimistically packed in my suitcase.

We dumped our bags in the nearest bedroom, which had iron bedsteads and shutters that creaked satisfyingly, then collapsed onto the terrace with the rescued Dolcetto and some bread we had panic-bought in Turin. The view was ridiculous. Rolling hills striped with vines, a line of cypresses marking some distant boundary, and the whole scene softening into haze where the Monferrato hills met the evening sky. I had seen photographs, obviously, but photographs do not convey the particular quality of light in Piedmont, nor the absolute stillness that settles over the countryside at dusk. Even my ankle stopped throbbing, though that might have been the wine.

I found myself thinking, as the stars began appearing in that shockingly clear rural sky, about how rarely I allow myself this kind of stillness. At home I am perpetually in motion, checking notifications, making lists, filling every silence with productivity or distraction. Here, within an hour of arrival, I had already been forced into a flowerbed, humbled by a decorative stone, and reduced to simply sitting and looking at hills. It was not comfortable, exactly, but it felt necessary. Like being gently reset to factory settings.

The sheep bell clanged again, closer now. Somewhere an owl started up. We finished the bottle without really talking much, which is the mark of a genuinely tired couple or a genuinely peaceful place, and I suspect it was both. Tomorrow we would explore properly, figure out the coffee maker, probably get lost again attempting to buy cheese. But for that first evening, the Marsaglia had already done what the best holiday properties do - it had stopped me in my tracks, quite literally, and made me pay attention to where I had actually arrived.