I have never been so relieved to see a wooden bench in my entire life. After eight hours of driving from Calais, two wrong turns round Innsbruck, and one spectacular argument with a sat nav that insisted Moena was "four hundred metres" away for the last forty minutes, I finally pulled up outside what I hoped was our holiday flat. I say hoped because in my exhausted state I had somehow managed to park in the neighbour's marked space, reversed out with the grace of a shopping trolley, and then tripped over my own suitcase while trying to read the key safe code. The neighbour, a trim chap in traditional lederhosen, watched this entire performance from his balcony with the patient expression of a man who had seen many British arrivals and would see many more.

The mishap that truly defined our arrival, though, happened at the Brenner Pass services. In my wisdom I had decided to stretch my legs, buy a coffee, and use the facilities. What I had not decided was to remember which section of the enormous car park I had left the car in. Forty minutes of wandering between identical rows of German and Austrian registrations, coffee growing cold in my hand, muttering "silver, it's definitely silver" to myself like a man in need of assistance. My partner sat in the passenger seat the whole time, phone on silent, reading a novel, entirely unaware that I was having a minor existential crisis three hundred metres away. When I finally located the car, I was too embarrassed to admit what had happened. I simply got in, started the engine, and said "shall we crack on then?" with what I imagined was casual authority. She looked at me, looked at my untouched coffee, and said nothing. She knew.

By the time we reached Moena, the Dolomites had begun to show themselves properly. Not the shy glimpses near the motorway, but the full theatrical reveal: jagged limestone peaks catching the late afternoon light, pine forests climbing impossible slopes, and that particular quality of air that makes you aware you have definitely gained altitude. The village itself sits in the Val di Fassa, and arriving in late September meant the summer crowds had thinned but the place had not yet shuttered for winter. It felt like catching someone in a good mood just before they go to bed.

Our flat was on the first floor of a traditional wooden house, the sort that makes you immediately conscious of how much plasterboard exists in British housing. The owner had left the key safe code and a handwritten note in slightly formal English welcoming us and reminding that check-in was technically from four o'clock, which I read at half past five with the guilty speed of a man who knows he is late but hopes no one has noticed. The note also mentioned the shared garden, the ski storage room we would not need, and the strict recycling system that would later become a source of genuine anxiety.

Stepping inside, the first thing that struck me was the smell. Not the artificial pine of cleaning products, but actual wood, actual mountain air that had somehow been trapped and preserved. The flat was simple in the best sense: heavy wooden furniture that would survive centuries, a kitchen with enough pots to suggest people actually cook here rather than just reheat, and a balcony that looked directly onto the Latemar mountain group. I stood there with my still-untouched cold coffee, now thoroughly undrinkable, and felt something shift. The Brenner Pass panic, the sat nav arguments, the lederhosen neighbour's silent judgment - none of it mattered quite as much.

My partner joined me on the balcony. She had found the welcome bottle of Grappa in the kitchen and poured two small glasses without asking. We stood there as the light changed, as the mountains turned from grey to pink to something approaching violet, and neither of us spoke about the car park incident. Some things, I decided, were better left in the enormous shared memory of holiday mishaps, right there between the services and the border, waiting for next time.