I have never been so grateful to see a dry stone wall in my entire life. After twelve hours of planes, trains, and an automobile that can only be described as "optimistically compact," we finally spotted the trulli roofs of our Valle d'Itria rental poking above the olive groves like a cluster of pointy-hatted gnomes hiding in the countryside.

The mishap, because there is always one with us, came at Bari Airport. In my enthusiasm to practise my Italian, I confidently told the car hire chap that we needed a vehicle with plenty of "bagaglio" space for our luggage. What I actually said, judging by his face, was something far more anatomical and entirely unsuitable for a family newspaper. My partner spent the next twenty minutes giggling while I over-explained our suitcases with elaborate hand gestures. We ended up with a Fiat 500 that technically fit our bags if you considered the passenger footwell a legitimate storage area.

The drive south through the Itria Valley should have been straightforward. It was not. Puglian roads have a charming habit of narrowing without warning, and at one point we found ourselves in a standoff with a tractor that ended with me reversing three hundred metres up a lane barely wider than a dinner plate. My driving confidence, never robust, now lies somewhere in an olive grove near Martina Franca.

But then we arrived. And I mean properly arrived, engine off, bags dragged across gravel, standing in the sunshine of a courtyard that smelled of jasmine and warm stone. Our trullo was absurdly picturesque, all whitewashed cones and ancient wooden doors that looked like they belonged in a fairy tale about sensible Italian peasants. The inside was cool and simple, with vaulted ceilings and furniture that had the pleasingly worn look of things actually used rather than staged for photographs.

I dropped my bag and immediately committed to my holiday strategy: doing as close to nothing as humanly possible. The pool glimmered invitingly. A hammock swayed in a light breeze. Somewhere, a cicada started up its afternoon shift. I felt the tension of motorway terror begin to dissolve into my sandals.

The first few days became a masterclass in deliberate laziness. Mornings meant strong coffee in the courtyard, watching swallows dart between the trulli roofs while I made serious progress through a novel I had been carrying around since March. The book had become a sort of travelling companion, perpetually half-finished, and here in the quiet, I finally found the mental space to care about the characters again. There is something deeply satisfying about reading in sunshine, the page slightly too bright, a cup going cold beside you because you forgot it existed.

We ventured out locally, of course, but never with any real urgency. The town of Locorotondo sits just up the road, all whitewashed walls and flower boxes, and we spent a happy afternoon wandering its centro storico without any particular destination. We ate orecchiette in a small trattoria where the owner seemed genuinely surprised we had found the place, then spent an hour people-watching from a bench in the main square. That was the extent of our ambition.

Nearby Martina Franca offered similar pleasures, its baroque architecture impressive without demanding much from us beyond appreciative glances. We bought bread and cheese from local shops, tomatoes that actually tasted of something, and made simple lunches to eat by the pool. The afternoon heat in Puglia is not something you fight against; you surrender to it entirely, moving slowly, seeking shade, accepting that productivity is a northern concept with no relevance here.

I found myself reflecting, somewhere between my third swim and fourth chapter, on how rarely I allow myself this kind of stillness. At home, even relaxation feels scheduled, optimised, posted about. Here, doing nothing required no justification. The days stretched and compressed in that peculiar holiday way, each one feeling full despite containing almost nothing by normal standards.

Evenings brought walks through the surrounding countryside as the light turned golden and the heat softened. The Valle d'Itria is absurdly pretty, all dry stone walls and ancient olive trees twisted into sculptural shapes by decades of wind. We watched the sun set behind distant trulli, the sky shifting through colours that seemed almost ostentatious.

By the end of our stay, I had finished my book, acquired a respectable swimming costume tan, and developed a genuine emotional attachment to my particular sun lounger. The car hire linguistic disaster felt like it had happened to someone else entirely. We packed our bags with the same excessive quantity of things but somehow they felt lighter, or perhaps we did.

As we drove away, the trulli shrinking in the rear view, I caught myself already planning our return. Not to see more, do more, tick more boxes. Simply to do exactly the same nothing all over again, but better, having had the practice.