I have never been very good at following sat nav instructions, and my arrival at Peio Terme proved this beyond all doubt. Somewhere between Bolzano and the mountains, I took what I can only describe as an optimistic left turn and found myself on a road barely wide enough for a determined goat. My hire car, a Fiat 500 that had seemed charming in the airport car park, now felt roughly the size of a combine harvester. I spent twenty minutes reversing up a hairpin bend while a local farmer watched from his tractor with the patient expression of a man who has seen this exact scene approximately four thousand times before.

When I finally rolled up to the property, I was two hours late, slightly hysterical, and clutching a bag of strange apricot biscuits I had panic-bought from a petrol station. The mountains, though. The mountains made every wrong turn worth it. They rose up on every side, green and impossibly steep, with the afternoon sun catching the rock faces in that particular golden way that makes you feel like you have wandered into a slightly too-perfect postcard.

The apartment itself had that wonderful South Tyrolean thing of being simultaneously rustic and embarrassingly comfortable. Heavy wooden beams, yes, but also a balcony that caught the sun from mid-morning until it slipped behind the peaks. I dumped my case, made a cup of tea that tasted of alpine water and relief, and simply stood there. The farmer's biscuits turned out to be excellent, by the way. Sometimes panic serves you well.

I had brought three books, which now seems like the most sensible decision I have made in several years. The days quickly arranged themselves into a rhythm so lazy it barely qualified as a rhythm at all. Morning coffee on the balcony, watching the light change on the mountains. A slow wander down to the village for bread and whatever looked interesting in the little shops. Back by midday to claim my spot in the sun with a novel, occasionally looking up to watch birds I could not identify circling on the thermals.

There is something deeply unfashionable about admitting you went on holiday and did almost nothing. We are supposed to want experiences, adventures, stories worth telling. I did walk to the nearby thermal baths one afternoon, it is true. I floated in warm mineral water and felt my remaining tension dissolve. I walked back through meadows full of wildflowers, slightly dizzy with relaxation and altitude. That was about as strenuous as it got.

The village of Peio itself is small enough that you cannot really get lost, which suited me perfectly after my driving debacle. I found a cafe that made excellent strudel and went there with the dedication of a woman who has discovered her spiritual home. The barman started recognising me, which in a place that small probably took about forty minutes.

On my last evening, I sat on that balcony until the sun had completely gone and the mountains turned to silhouettes. I thought about all the holidays where I had rushed about, ticking things off, coming home more tired than I left. There is a particular kind of joy in doing very little, I decided, in letting a place simply hold you for a while. The apricot biscuits were long finished. The books were all half-read, which is exactly how books should be on holiday. I went to bed early, slept like someone with absolutely nothing to prove, and woke to more sunshine and absolutely no plans whatsoever.