I have never been so pleased to see a swimming pool in my entire life, and that includes the time I fell into the Serpentine trying to impress someone at a party. The drive from Bari Airport to Ostuni had been straightforward enough, or so I thought until my phone decided that "recalculating" was its favourite word and sent us down what I can only describe as a goat track masquerading as a road. My partner sat in the passenger seat making that face, you know the one, while our youngest announced from the back that she needed the toilet approximately four minutes after we had passed the last services for what felt like eternity.

The mishap, though. I must tell you about the mishap. In my wisdom, I had packed the sat nav in the hold luggage to save cabin space. Brilliant move, obviously. What I had not packed was the address written down anywhere sensible, relying instead on a screenshot on my phone. A screenshot that, in the mounting panic of arrival, I discovered I had somehow screenshotted the wrong property entirely. We pulled up to a very lovely looking farmhouse somewhere near Ceglie Messapica, I later worked out, and I strode up to the door with the confidence of a man who had definitely booked the correct holiday. An extremely patient Italian gentleman explained, through my terrible phrasebook Italian and increasingly desperate hand gestures, that we were about twenty minutes away from where we actually needed to be. My partner did not say "I told you so." Her silence was louder.

When we finally found the right place, tucked into the countryside just outside Ostuni's famous white-washed old town, I practically wept with relief. The property was exactly what you want from a Puglia holiday, all creamy stone walls and shady terraces, with that particular stillness that only seems to exist in hot countries when the afternoon stretches out before you like a promise. The pool glimmered at us, utterly irresistible, and within approximately ninety seconds of arriving the children had vanished into it while my partner and I stood in the kitchen with warm bottles of water and just breathed.

I think what struck me first was how immediately it felt like ours. Not in a possessive way, but in that comfortable, lived-in sense that proper family holidays have. The kitchen opened onto a covered terrace with a long table, the sort that demands long lunches and the gradual accumulation of olive oil bottles and torn bread. There was a barbecue in the garden that looked well-used, honest, not one of those pristine showpieces that intimidate you into ordering takeaway. I found myself already planning evenings out there, something simple on the coals, the children finally tired enough to sit still while the light faded.

Ostuni itself sat there on its hill in the distance, blinding white against the blue sky, close enough to wander into for gelato and a stroll but far enough that you felt properly removed from anything resembling a crowd. We could see the olive groves rolling away in every direction, those ancient trees that look like they have been standing there since before anyone thought to invent stress. I kept catching myself just staring at them, which sounds terribly pretentious, but there is something about that landscape that slows you down whether you like it or not.

The first evening, I attempted to use the outdoor pizza oven with the confidence of a man who had watched approximately one YouTube video on the subject. The results were edible, technically, though my partner's raised eyebrow suggested that "edible" was perhaps doing some heavy lifting. We ate outside as the temperature finally dropped to something bearable, the children chattering about the pool and the lizards they had spotted and when could they go back in, and I felt that particular contentment that comes from having absolutely nothing planned beyond tomorrow's breakfast.

I had arrived convinced that I had ruined everything with my navigational incompetence. By sunset, sitting there with a glass of something local and cold, I could not remember why I had been worried. Some holidays need grand adventures and packed itineraries. This one, I could already tell, was going to be about the opposite, and I was entirely happy with that.