I should have known the holiday had truly begun when I managed to get our hire car stuck in a sandy car park not five minutes from the property. There we were, the four of us, sat in a Fiat Panda that was going precisely nowhere, while a local man with a tractor looked on with the patient amusement of someone who has seen this dozens of times before. My wife was doing that thing where she stares straight ahead and breathes very deliberately. The children, naturally, thought it was the funniest thing they had ever witnessed. I stepped out to assess the situation with what I hoped looked like competent authority, sinking immediately to my ankle in soft sand. The tractor man, Salvatore, waved me back into the car and towed us free in about thirty seconds. He refused payment, laughed heartily at my Italian, and pointed us down a narrow lane lined with dry stone walls and olive trees that seemed to lean in with curiosity.

Marina di Lizzano itself crept up on us rather than announced itself. One moment we were bumping along between fields of tomatoes and the strange, gnarled shapes of ancient olive groves, the next we caught a flash of turquoise through the trees and smelled that particular salt-and-pine combination that makes you exhale properly for the first time in months. The property sat in a small cluster of similar cottages, low whitewashed buildings with terracotta roofs that looked as though they had grown organically from the reddish soil rather than been built upon it.

Our cottage was simple in the best possible way. A small kitchen with terracotta tiles worn smooth by decades of sandy feet, a terrace with a barbecue that had clearly seen some action, and bedrooms with shutters that actually kept out the morning light. I am normally one for checking every appliance and complaining about minor inconveniences, but something about the warmth of the place and perhaps the lingering embarrassment of my earlier performance made me determined to embrace the rustic charm. The children bolted straight through to explore the shared garden, shrieking about a lemon tree they had discovered, while my wife and I stood on the terrace with cold bottles of Peroni from the tiny fridge and watched the sun beginning its slow descent toward the sea.

That first evening set the pattern for what I suspect will become a cherished memory. We walked the ten minutes down to the beach, a stretch of coarse sand and shingle that felt gloriously unspoilt compared to the packaged resorts I had endured as a child. The water was that impossible clear green that photographs never quite capture, and shallow enough that you could wade out fifty metres and still touch the bottom. My daughter spent an hour collecting what she assured us were rare shells, most of which turned out to be broken bits of mussel shell, but we admired them with appropriate gravity.

We ate at a small trattoria back toward the cottages, nothing fancy, just grilled fish and vegetables roasted until sweet and a carafe of local Primitivo that cost less than a glass of house red at our local pub. The children fell asleep at the table, heads on folded arms, and rather than the usual parental stress about bedtimes, we simply carried them home through warm darkness punctuated by crickets and the occasional distant bark of a dog.

Lying in bed that night, listening to unfamiliar sounds and feeling the particular tiredness that comes from sea air and proper relaxation, I found myself reflecting on how rarely I allow myself to be this version of me. The one who does not need everything to be perfect, who can laugh at being towed from a car park by a stranger, who recognises that the best holidays are not about what you see but how slowly you learn to move. I had arrived expecting to tick off sights and experiences, and instead found myself grateful for a lemon tree, a shared terrace, and the simple pleasure of watching my family discover somewhere new at their own pace.

The sand was still in my shoes, and I decided to leave it there.