I should have known the satnav was up to no good when it tried to send me through what looked like someone's olive grove. Three hours out of Pisa, winding through the Chianti hills with the windows down and my partner doing that thing where they read every road sign aloud, we were properly ready to arrive at our Bibbiena farmhouse. The place sat just outside the medieval town itself, all honey-coloured stone and terracotta roofs, exactly the sort of Tuscan idyll you convince yourself exists only on postcards.

The mishap came during the final mile. I spotted a narrow track peeling off the main road and, in a moment of spectacular overconfidence, announced that this was "definitely the shortcut." It was not the shortcut. It was a farm track belonging to a very patient man named Marco, who found me reversing his tractor out of a ditch while his dog watched with what I can only describe as professional disappointment. My partner filmed the whole thing. We are, apparently, "keeping this forever."

By the time we actually reached the property, dusty and slightly humbled, the late afternoon heat had settled into that glorious Tuscan warmth that makes you forget all sensible plans. The farmhouse had a pool, naturally, and a terrace that looked out over the Casentino valley. I had packed walking boots with serious intent. I had researched trails through the nearby Foreste Casentinesi. I was going to be a person who hiked properly, who strode through cypress-lined paths at dawn, who understood the word "terroir" without wincing.

What I actually did was collapse onto a sun lounger and not move for forty minutes.

The weather had other ideas for my ambitious itinerary anyway. The first morning brought that particular kind of Tuscan heat that starts gentle and becomes oppressive by ten o'clock, the air thick enough to swim through. We attempted a walk toward the town of Bibbiena itself, a lovely medieval cluster with proper cobbled streets and a church that made me feel briefly cultured. We made it halfway up the hill before retreating to a cafe for granita, which we agreed counted as "experiencing local culture."

The real walking happened in stolen moments. Early mornings, before the heat built, we'd pad down the farm track - the proper one, not Marco's - through vineyards that smelled of warmed earth and rosemary. The property sat in that perfect zone where you could stroll to nothing in particular and feel thoroughly accomplished about it. There was a ruined chapel about twenty minutes away, which I visited twice and never once remembered to photograph properly because I was too busy trying to identify birds I had no hope of naming.

By midweek, the weather shifted to something more dramatic. Afternoon thunderstorms rolled in from the Apennines, sudden and theatrical, sending us scurrying back from attempted excursions with that particular holiday shame of being caught in rain while carrying a "proper" walking backpack. We spent one entire afternoon on the covered terrace, watching lightning fork over the valley, playing cards badly and eating pecorino we had no business finishing.

I had wanted to be a serious walker. I had wanted to earn my Tuscan experience through mild physical suffering and impressive mileage. Instead, I wandered slowly, sweated abundantly, and learned that the best view from that farmhouse was the one from the hammock, slightly swaying, with a glass of something local and absolutely no intention of going anywhere ambitious.

Marco's dog would have approved.