I have never been so happy to see a sat nav give up on me as I was somewhere just outside Foggia, when ours decided that the road to Peschici simply did not exist. My other half, Dave, was driving, and I was navigating the old-fashioned way with a map I'd bought at Stansted that was already falling apart at the folds. We had been on the road for the best part of four hours after our flight into Bari, and the April light was starting to soften into that golden hour that makes everything look either magical or deeply suspicious, depending on your mood.

The mishap came at a roundabout where I confidently sent us left instead of right, which led us down a lane barely wide enough for a Vespa, let alone our hire car. We met a farmer herding goats. Actual goats. Dave wound down the window and attempted Italian that sounded more like Spanish with a cold. The farmer just pointed back the way we had come, laughing in that generous way Italians have when foreigners are being spectacularly useless. We reversed for nearly half a mile. My map tore completely. Dave developed a twitch.

But then we crested the final hill, and there was Peschici, perched on its rocky promontory with the Adriatic stretching out beyond it in that particular shade of blue that makes you forget you have been arguing about directions for the last twenty minutes. The town was quiet in that shoulder-season way, not quite awake for summer but not fully asleep either. Restaurants had their shutters half-open, chairs stacked hopefully outside. The air smelled of sea salt and something faintly herbal, probably wild oregano growing on the cliffs.

Our property was one of those whitewashed places you see on postcards and assume cannot possibly be real. It was real, and it was spectacular, and it was absolutely freezing inside. This was the thing about April in Puglia that nobody had properly warned me about. The days were warm, almost hot in direct sun, but the buildings were designed for summer heat, thick stone walls that held onto cold like a grudge. Dave turned the heating on while I stood on the terrace in a t-shirt, shivering and sweating simultaneously, which is a sensation I do not recommend.

The terrace was the revelation, though. Even in that uncertain season, even with the wind coming off the sea with a bit of a bite to it, there was something about standing there with a cup of tea made with a kettle that took approximately seventeen minutes to boil, watching the fishing boats come back to the harbour below. The light was different every ten minutes, clouds scudding across and making patterns on the water. In July, I imagine, that terrace would be unbearable by midday, a frying pan of sun-blasted stone. In April, it was usable all afternoon if you kept a cardigan handy.

We walked down to the old town that first evening, hungry and slightly delirious from travel. Most places were still on winter hours, which meant early closing, but we found a trattoria where the owner was sitting outside reading a newspaper and seemed mildly surprised to see customers. He produced bread that was still warm, and pasta with clams that tasted properly of the sea, not the refrigerator. We ate with our coats on, because the restaurant had the same stone-cold problem as our property, and honestly I would not have changed it. There was something about that slight hardship, that need to wrap your hands around a hot bowl, that made the food taste better.

I kept thinking about what this place would be like in August, when the car parks would be full and the beaches packed with umbrellas in regimented rows. Our April beach, when we finally walked down to it the next morning, was empty except for a man exercising a dog and a few optimistic fishermen. The sand was too cold for swimming, though Dave did paddle and came back with his feet a worrying shade of pink. But we could walk for miles without stepping around anyone's towel, could hear the actual waves instead of competing radios, could sit on the rocks and watch a storm blow in from the east without having to pack up and flee a crowded lido.

That storm was something else, actually. It rolled in on our third day, black clouds piling up where the horizon had been clear an hour before. The property's terrace became a viewing platform for proper Adriatic weather, rain sheeting down and turning the sea grey-green and furious. In summer, I suppose, you would have been out somewhere and had to run for cover. We were already home, already in socks and jumpers, already boiling that slow kettle for another round of tea. We played cards and listened to the rain on the shutters and felt smug in a way that only people who have accidentally chosen the exactly right season can feel smug.

I think about that trip now when friends ask about Puglia, and they always want to know about the best time to go. I tell them about the swimming and the nightlife and the guaranteed sunshine of July, because that is what they want to hear. But I tell them too about the empty beaches and the warm bread and the storms watched from a cold terrace with a hot drink in your hands, and how sometimes the wrong season is exactly the right one, if you pack a decent cardigan and do not trust your navigator.