I have never been more grateful for a sat nav than I was driving down to Vieste, though I will admit it did try to murder me twice. The first time was somewhere near Foggia when it decided a dirt track through an olive grove constituted a main road. The second was in Vieste itself, where it confidently directed me down a passage barely wider than a determined scooter, at which point I found myself nose to nose with a local nonna carrying what appeared to be an entire bakery under each arm. She did not look impressed. I reversed approximately half a mile with my wing mirrors folded in, sweating through my shirt, questioning every life choice that had led me to this moment.

But then I arrived at the property, perched up on that hillside with the Gargano stretching out below, and suddenly the sat nav's attempted betrayal felt like a distant memory. The terrace was the first thing that got me. Proper views, the kind that make you stand there like a lemon with your car keys still in your hand, just staring. I could see the old town jutting out into the Adriatic, the sea doing that impossible blue thing it does down here. I put my bags down, opened a beer I had bought at an autograde somewhere near Bari, and promptly forgot to drink it because I was too busy gawping.

The kitchen, though. That is where my holiday really began, and where my competence would be tested. I had grand plans about self-catering, about living like a local, about mornings at the market and long lunches with wine that cost less than a London coffee. The kitchen was compact but well-equipped, and I stood there that first evening with my lone supermarket bag feeling like I was about to cook on Masterchef. The reality was rather more Greggs. I had bought pasta, obviously, some tinned tomatoes, a wedge of parmesan that I later discovered was pecorino because my Italian remains GCSE-level at best, and a bottle of local olive oil that I would come to treat with the reverence usually reserved for religious artefacts.

The following morning I found the market in Vieste's old town, down near the harbour where the fishing boats come in. This was the real thing, not the tourist version. Old men selling vegetables they had grown themselves, shouting prices and gossip in equal measure. I bought tomatoes that actually smelled of tomatoes, which sounds like a low bar until you remember British supermarkets. I bought fresh orecchiette, those little ear-shaped pastas that Puglia does better than anywhere. I bought a bunch of wild chicory from a woman who communicated entirely through gestures and disapproving facial expressions, and I am fairly certain she sold me twice what I needed because I could not work out how to say "that is enough" with sufficient conviction.

My first attempt at a proper Puglian lunch was a qualified disaster. The orecchiette with cime di rapa, which I had eaten in a restaurant in Bari years ago and never forgotten, turned into a sort of green sludge. The broccoli rabe, or whatever close relative I had actually purchased, went bitter on me. The garlic burned. I ate it anyway, on the terrace, with a three euro Primitivo that tasted like it should cost thirty, and I decided that failure in Puglia still beats success in most other places.

By day three I had found my rhythm. A man at the market, who introduced himself as Giuseppe and who I suspect was called something else entirely, taught me to feel the weight of a good tomato and to never, under any circumstances, refrigerate my olive oil. I started making proper panzanella with bread from the bakery near the cathedral, the kind of bread with a proper crust that fights back when you cut it. I grilled fish on the little barbecue on the terrace, sea bream from the morning catch, simply done with lemon and that miraculous oil. I ate burrata almost daily, which feels excessive until you remember it was invented down the road in Andria and that the stuff they export barely counts.

The local shop near the property became my second home. The owner, a patient woman named Rosa, slowly stopped looking alarmed when I attempted Italian and started offering me tastes of things. A slice of aged caciocavallo. A spoonful of olive tapenade. I once tried to buy what I thought was cooking wine and she physically blocked me from reaching it, then produced something drinkable with a look that suggested she was saving me from myself.

My last evening, I cooked properly. Orecchiette again, but this time with a slow-simmered tomato sauce, the good oil, basil from a pot on the terrace that I had been nursing like a child. Grilled peppers and aubergine, done simply, letting the ingredients do the work. I ate slowly, watching the light change over the sea, already planning what I would attempt next time, already knowing I would come back. The sat nav could try to kill me again. I would risk it.