I have never been so pleased to see a row of olive trees in my life. After a flight to Bari, a hire car that smelled faintly of lemon air freshener and regret, and a sat-nav that decided "shortcut" meant "gravel track through someone's vineyard," I finally rolled up to the villa in Marina di Manduria. That is when I discovered I had packed three phone chargers, two novels, and not a single pair of trousers. Just shorts. Eight pairs of shorts. In April. When the evenings still had a bite to them.

I stood there in the driveway, clutching my case of beachwear, while a local cat judged me from a dry stone wall. The villa itself was lovely, mind you. Whitewashed walls, a terrace that caught the morning sun, and a garden where rosemary and thyme grew in unruly bushes. I could smell the sea somewhere in the distance, though I never did work out exactly which direction it was. The breeze kept shifting.

The first morning, I did absolutely nothing. This was the point, I had decided. No itineraries, no "popping over" to see sights two hours away. Just me, a sun lounger, and a book I had been pretending to read since Christmas. I got through three pages before dozing off. Woke up with a faint imprint of the paperback on my cheek and a renewed appreciation for the Italian art of slowing down.

By midday, the terrace was too hot even for my sun-starved British skin. I retreated to the shade with a plate of burrata I had picked up from a nearby caseificio. Let me tell you, supermarket burrata at home is a completely different food group. This stuff oozed properly, cream and stracciatella spilling out like it was trying to escape. I ate it with my fingers because I could not be bothered to find a fork, and because I was on holiday, and because no one was watching except that same cat, who had returned with what I can only describe as disappointed expectations.

The afternoons became a gentle rhythm. A slow stroll to the local shop for more tomatoes than any one person reasonably needed. A wander down lanes lined with dry stone walls, past trulli-style outbuildings and fields of vines not yet in leaf. Everything felt held in pause, waiting for the real heat of summer to arrive. I liked it like that. Unfinished, expectant, quiet.

Some days I did not leave the villa at all. Read the same paragraph four times. Made coffee and forgot to drink it. Watched the shadow of the terrace umbrella creep across the tiles. There is a particular pleasure in doing very little when you have travelled a long way to do it. It feels earned, somehow. Or perhaps just stubborn.

On my final evening, I sat out with a glass of Primitivo, wearing three of my eight pairs of shorts layered for warmth like some sort of confused tourist lasagne. The sun went down slowly, staining the sky above the olive groves. I thought about all the things I had not done. No churches, no museums, no frantic sightseeing. Just sun, cheese, and the occasional nap.

I decided I preferred it that way.