I have never been so relieved to see a wheelie bin in my entire life. After a seven-hour flight, a two-hour queue at Bari airport that moved slower than my gran at a car boot sale, and a hire car with air conditioning that wheezed like a retired accordion, we finally pulled up to our Masseria just outside Mesagne. That is when I realised I had left our booking confirmation on the kitchen table in Croydon. Printed it out specially, laminated it and everything. Useless.

The sat nav had given up three miles back, defeated by Puglia's charming approach to road signage. We had been circling olive groves for twenty minutes, growing increasingly convinced we would spend our holiday living in a Fiat Panda. Then my partner spotted the wheelie bin. It matched the photo on the website. We were home, or at least home for the next fortnight.

The gates creaked open and there it was. Proper Puglian countryside. Dry stone walls, ancient olive trees twisted into impossible shapes, and a main house that looked like it had been standing since before someone thought to invent the roof tile. Which, given this is Italy, probably meant it had. The owners, a lovely couple called Marco and Luisa, emerged waving as if we were long-lost relatives rather than sweaty Brits who had just committed a minor administrative blunder.

Marco spoke excellent English, which was fortunate as my Italian extends to ordering coffee and apologising for being English. Luisa spoke none, but communicated through gestures, smiles, and occasionally grabbing my arm to point at something she found noteworthy. Within minutes she had established that I was too thin, that the tomatoes in her garden were ready, and that we must sit down immediately before we collapsed.

The mishap with the booking confirmation turned out to be no bother whatsoever. Marco simply laughed, said "this is Puglia, not Germany," and poured us glasses of something cold and local. I felt simultaneously grateful and slightly foolish for my laminated-paper anxiety. There is something about arriving somewhere after a long journey that strips away your pretensions. You are too tired to perform. You just want to sit in a plastic chair in a courtyard and drink whatever someone puts in front of you.

The Masseria itself exceeded what I had imagined. Thick walls that kept the heat at bay, vaulted ceilings, floors worn smooth by generations of feet. Our bedroom had shutters that actually shut, unlike the decorative nonsense at home, and when I opened them the next morning the view was nothing but silver-green olive trees stretching to a hazy horizon. But I am getting ahead of myself. That first evening we simply sat there, watching swallows dart about, listening to Marco explain that the building dated back to the sixteen hundreds and had been in Luisa's family for generations.

I kept waiting to feel the urge to do something. Check my phone, plan an activity, worry about dinner reservations. Instead I found myself doing nothing with great enthusiasm. Luisa brought out bread she had baked that morning, oil from their own olives, tomatoes that tasted like tomatoes rather than the watery disappointments I was used to. We ate until it got dark, which in late June takes its time, and I realised I had not thought about work, or traffic, or the confirmation email sitting uselessly on my kitchen table, for several hours.

That is the thing about arriving somewhere properly rural after a long journey. The mishaps stop mattering. The world shrinks to the size of a courtyard, a plastic chair, a glass of something local, and the particular quality of light as evening comes on slowly, as if it too has nowhere particular to be.