The drive down from Bari airport had been going suspiciously well, which in my experience is always a warning sign. My partner was navigating, I was pretending to know what a ZTL zone was, and we'd successfully avoided three scooters and one extremely relaxed goat by the time Martina Franca appeared on the horizon. Then I turned into what I was absolutely convinced was our lane, only to find myself face-to-face with a very patient man carrying a crate of artichokes, who explained through elaborate hand gestures that I'd just committed to a one-way street in the wrong direction, and that the entire population of a nearby trattoria was now watching my reverse manoeuvre with the kind of attention usually reserved for penalty shootouts.

We'd booked a converted trullo complex just outside the old town walls, the sort of place with whitewashed stone, a private pool, and what the listing called "authentic rustic charm." Arriving in late September, I'd expected the full Puglian summer experience - blazing heat, cicadas, that thick golden light you see on Instagram. What I hadn't properly accounted for was how the season was already turning, how the edge had softened on everything.

The pool, for instance. Glorious to look at, surrounded by olive trees that were just beginning to show the first hints of silver against their green. But that first afternoon, after our artichoke-related humiliation, I ran at it with the confidence of a man who'd been sitting in a hire car for two hours. I surfaced making a noise I can only describe as a yodel of betrayal. My partner, wiser, was still on the edge with her toes in, laughing in that particularly warm way that suggested she'd checked the water temperature while I was busy being a hero.

September in Martina Franca is a season of negotiations. The summer crowds have thinned to something almost civilised, but the town hasn't quite committed to autumn either. The evenings carried a chill that sent me rummaging through my suitcase for the one jumper I'd optimistically packed, while the afternoons still demanded sunscreen and a hat. I found myself constantly wrong-footed, setting out in shorts only to be caught in a sudden downpour that turned the limestone streets slick and treacherous, or bundling up for an evening stroll and finding the piazza still bathed in improbable warmth.

The property itself seemed designed for this in-between time. The thick stone walls kept the afternoon heat at bay, but the outdoor kitchen with its pizza oven felt almost too exposed once the sun dropped. We developed a routine of cooking while it was still light, eating as the sky turned that particular Puglian pink, then retreating inside with wine and the sounds of the countryside settling around us. The crickets were still going, but slower now, less frantic. You could hear individual birds rather than the dense wall of summer sound.

Wandering the old town became a study in seasonal contradictions. Some restaurants had already switched to shorter hours, their owners catching their breath after the August madness. Others were still in full flow, though the clientele had shifted from families with screaming children to couples like us, to elderly Italians taking their passeggiata with the unhurried pace of people who know they've outlasted another summer. The shops selling linen and olive wood were beginning to look slightly desperate, the owners perhaps calculating how much stock to carry through to next year.

I kept noticing how the light fell differently than I'd imagined. Shorter days meant golden hour arrived sooner and lasted longer in some strange way, the sun lower, the shadows more pronounced across the baroque facades. The famous white walls of Martina Franca glowed rather than blazed. It was beautiful, but it was a quieter beauty, one that required something from you - a willingness to slow down, to not expect the full Technicolor assault of peak season.

That first evening, after my pool-related trauma, we'd walked into town for dinner and found a place still with outdoor seating, still with heaters standing ready like sentinels against the coming cold. I ate orecchiette with cime di rapa, that distinctive Puglian bitterness, and drank a local Primitivo that tasted of the same soil the olives grew in. My partner pointed out that I'd developed a slight sunburn on one arm, the one that had hung out the window during our wrong turn with the artichokes.

I suppose that's what September gave us - the last gifts of summer, already slightly tinged with regret, mixed with the first intimations of something more contemplative. The pool was cold, the evenings unpredictable, the town half-asleep and half-awake. But sitting there with wine going warm in my glass, watching my partner laugh again at my pool entry, I thought that perhaps I'd been wrong to want the full heat, the peak experience. There's something to be said for arriving as things are winding down, for catching a place in its moment of exhale.

We stayed a week. The weather turned properly autumnal by the end, rain drumming on the stone roof of our trullo, the pool definitively abandoned. I didn't mind. I'd made my peace with the season, with my own ridiculous expectations, with the particular rhythm of a place that knows summer is ending and doesn't pretend otherwise.