I should have known the sat nav was plotting against me the moment it sent us down a track barely wide enough for a Vespa, let alone our battered Fiat Panda. We'd flown into Bari in late October, chasing what the brochures optimistically called the "golden autumn" of Puglia, and there we were, crawling through olive groves with branches scraping both sides of the car like nature's very own car wash. My partner, ever the optimist, insisted this was "the scenic route." I suggested less printable alternatives.

The light at that hour, though. That late afternoon October light filtering through silver-green leaves, turning everything honeyed and soft. You can see why people romanticise this season. The summer crowds have vanished, the infernal heat has broken, and Puglia settles into something slower, more itself. We were staying in Turi, one of those towns perched on the Murgia plateau that you might miss entirely if you blinked at the wrong moment, and the property we'd found was a proper old stone house with a small garden and a terrace that promised sunset views over the olive sea.

Finding the actual entrance proved another matter entirely. The sat nav cheerfully announced we'd arrived while we sat facing what appeared to be someone's garage. I rang the local contact, attempting my phrasebook Italian with the confidence of a man who'd once successfully ordered a cappuccino in Rome. She talked me through the directions with the patient tone of someone who'd done this a hundred times before. Turn at the almond tree, she said. The one with the broken wall. Of course. How obvious.

The house itself revealed itself slowly, as October places do. The stone was warm still from the day's sun, but you could feel the season turning in the cool of the doorway, in the slightly damp smell of rooms closed up since summer's end. The owners had left the heating off, sensibly waiting for true winter, so we spent that first evening in jumpers and scarves, unpacking with the brisk efficiency of people trying to keep warm. I made the mistake of opening the terrace doors for that promised sunset view, letting in a rush of air that had clearly originated somewhere in the Balkans. The view was spectacular, mind you. The Valle d'Itria rolling away in bands of bronze and green, the first lights of distant towns pricking the gathering dark, a sky that shifted from tangerine to something deep and violet. I stood there until my fingers went numb, telling myself this was character building.

October in Puglia brings a particular rhythm. The morning starts late, misty and reluctant, the sun not clearing the horizon with any conviction until eight. We'd wake to find the garden glittering with dew, the herbs in their pots looking slightly shocked by the overnight chill. By midday, though, the terrace became habitable again, even pleasant, and we'd sit with coffee watching the local cats make their patrols through the olive grove boundary. The cat from the neighbouring house, a battle-scarred tabby we named Giuseppe, adopted us with the transactional interest of someone who recognised soft touches when he saw them.

The kitchen became the heart of those evenings, as kitchens do when the weather turns. We'd bought vegetables from a market in nearby Conversano, late-season tomatoes still decent, cavolo nero that actually tasted of something, proper bread from the bakery in Turi's old centre that opened early and closed by midday. Cooking with the windows steamed up, Radio Italia playing faintly on a phone, the occasional pop of olive wood from the small fireplace we'd figured out how to light without filling the room with smoke. Mostly figured out. There's a particular shame to being a grown man defeated by kindling, watching your partner silently take over with the practised patience of someone who's seen this performance before.

That first night, we slept under blankets that felt slightly underpowered for the temperature, waking at intervals to debate whether we'd been foolish to come in autumn rather than the more obvious summer months. But the morning answered that, I think. The clarity of it, the emptiness of the roads, the sense of having slipped into Puglia's quieter, more honest rhythm. The tourists had gone home, and what remained was something more durable, more worth the small discomforts of a house designed for warmer months.

We stayed a week. Each day the light shifted earlier, the shadows lengthened faster, and we adjusted our pace accordingly. That's the thing about travelling in the shoulder season, I suppose. You're not borrowing someone else's perfect weather. You're meeting a place as it actually lives, and learning to live a little like it does too. Even if that means wearing two jumpers to breakfast and pretending you planned it that way.