I have never been so grateful for a thermos of tea in my entire life. There we were, my partner and I, crawling up the A26 towards Orta San Giulio in mid-November, convinced we had timed our Piedmont escape to perfection. The autumn colours, we told ourselves. The misty mornings. The romantic isolation. What nobody had mentioned was that Italian motorways in late autumn have a personality disorder, and ours had decided to be a car wash.

The mishap came just past Biella. I had insisted on navigating, waving my phone about like a conductor, while my partner drove. "Take the next exit," I announced, confident as you like. We did. It was not our exit. It was, in fact, a service station perched on a hillside with precisely one vending machine and a view of rain-soaked vineyards that stretched for miles in the wrong direction. Forty minutes of muttering and three-point turns later, we found ourselves back on track, my navigational pride in tatters and my partner wearing that particular expression of long-suffering patience that I have come to know rather too well.

By the time we reached Orta San Giulio, the light was doing that extraordinary thing it does in Piedmont at this time of year, a sort of honeyed fading that makes everything look slightly unreal. The village itself seemed to have been waiting for us, huddled against the shore of Lago d'Orta with its pastel buildings turned amber by the low sun. Even my embarrassment melted a bit. We wound down through the narrow streets, the car's heater still blasting against the chill that had crept in through every seal, and I found myself gripping the seat, half-convinced we would scrape a medieval wall or flatten a wandering cat.

The property sat above the village, which meant steps. Many steps. In November, with the day's rain still clinging to everything, those stone steps had developed a gleam that spoke of broken ankles and holiday insurance claims. I made my partner carry the large case after my navigational failure, which felt only fair. He disagreed, but he is better at balancing than I am, and we both knew it.

Opening the door, the first thing that struck me was the smell. Woodsmoke, yes, but something else too, that particular damp stone scent that old Italian houses seem to exhale in autumn. The place had been closed up against the season, and it took a moment to feel welcoming. I stood in the doorway like a fool, letting the cold in, until my partner nudged me forward and started wrestling with the heating controls.

It was the darkness that defined those first hours, more than anything. Not the darkness of gloom, but the specific weight of early nightfall that comes to northern Italy in November. By four o'clock, we were lighting lamps. By five, we had abandoned any pretence of exploring and had instead opened the wine we had bought at that wrong-turn service station, which turned out to be surprisingly decent. We sat in the kitchen with our coats still on, waiting for the ancient radiators to remember their purpose, watching the last light leak out of the sky above the lake.

I had expected to feel restless, I think. The summer version of me would have been pacing, planning, desperate to squeeze experience from every moment. But autumn in Piedmont moves differently. It invites a slowness that borders on stubbornness. The lake outside was grey and barely rippled, the island of San Giulio across the water reduced to a dark smudge, and rather than disappointing me, this felt honest. The season was not performing for us. We were simply there, present in it, slightly ridiculous in our layers of jumpers, drinking mediocre wine and gradually feeling the stone walls surrender their chill.

The morning brought mist so thick I could not see the lake at all. I stood on the small terrace with my tea, which I had finally made properly, and felt the damp air settle on my face like a familiar touch. Somewhere below, a church bell marked the hour. The steps that had seemed treacherous in arrival now looked merely soft, blurred at their edges by the fog. I thought about our wrong turn, my failed navigation, the way we had arrived slightly battered and thoroughly imperfect. The season had not cared. It had simply continued its slow turn towards winter, indifferent and beautiful, and we were lucky enough to be caught inside it, however briefly, however clumsily.