I have never been so grateful for a sat nav that could say "recalculating" in three languages. Our journey to Trabia began with the sort of optimism that only a 6am flight from Luton can provide, and ended with me attempting to reverse a hire car down a lane barely wide enough for a determined scooter. The sat nav, bless its electronic heart, had decided that "shortest route" meant "most agriculturally authentic." We arrived at the villa with a bumper full of bougainvillea petals and my dignity somewhere back near a lemon grove.

It was late October, that strange in-between time that Sicily does so beautifully. Not the scorching August madness of the brochures, nor the quiet shuttered world of January. Just... golden. The kind of light that makes you feel slightly emotional for no reason you can properly articulate. I kept finding myself standing still, holding a suitcase in each hand, staring at how the afternoon sun caught the stone walls of the property. My partner had to physically guide me through the doorway.

The villa itself sat perched above the coastline with the sort of casual grandeur that only comes from actually being old rather than trying to look it. The pool, still open because the owners had wisely extended the season, wore a thin skin of fallen leaves that skittered across the surface in the warm breeze. I had packed for "autumn" in the British sense - jumpers, sensible shoes, a rain mac that spent the entire week looking at me accusingly from the wardrobe. The reality was swimming weather, just about, if you didn't mind that initial sharp intake of breath and the certain knowledge that your mother would call it "bracing."

Our first evening, we walked down to the small harbour as the light faded. The fishing boats were coming in, and something about the season meant the catch was different from summer - fewer tourists demanding sea bream, more of whatever the boats actually caught. We ate at a place where the owner seemed mildly surprised to see us, in that October way. Not unwelcoming, just... adjusting. Like a bear waking up to find someone had left the honey out. He brought us wine from somewhere local, refused to tell us the price beforehand, and we were too British to ask twice.

What struck me most, that first night, was the smell. Summer Sicily hits you with jasmine and heat and sunscreen. October Sicily smells of woodsmoke starting up, of grapes being pressed somewhere you can't quite locate, of the sea doing whatever the sea does when it cools down but hasn't turned winter-cold yet. I stood on the terrace with a glass of something red and local, watching the last light fade over the water, and felt that particular melancholy that comes from realising you have absolutely nothing urgent to do.

The mishap with the car, the bougainvillea, the sat nav's creative navigation - it all felt properly distant now. The season had caught me somehow, in that way that places do when you arrive at exactly the right wrong time. Too late for the summer crowds, too early for the Christmas markets that presumably exist somewhere. Just... present. Unaccountably, unexpectedly present.

I went to bed that first night with the windows open, which in October Britain would have been an invitation to pneumonia, and woke to the sound of someone, somewhere, harvesting olives. The light had shifted again, morning-gold now, and I understood something about why people write poems about this island that I hadn't grasped in my two previous summer visits. The season had made it human-sized, approachable, slightly imperfect in the most perfect way.

My rain mac remained in the wardrobe, silently judging, for six more days.