I have never been so relieved to see a gravel driveway in my life. After six hours of driving from Pisa, during which I managed to get lost twice in the same roundabout and once followed a tractor for what felt like an eternity, I finally spotted the stone walls of our Fauglia holiday home. The sat nav had given up on me somewhere near Livorno, and my phone was down to four percent. Classic.

It was late October, and the Tuscan light was doing that golden thing it does in autumn, all low and slanted and slightly smug about being so photogenic. I stepped out of the car and immediately felt the chill in the air, that proper seasonal bite that makes you grateful you packed the chunky jumper your mum insisted you bring. She knows, doesn't she? Mums always know.

The property sat among olive groves that were being harvested, nets spread beneath the trees like enormous green fishing expeditions. A local man with hands that looked like they had been shaking hands with trees for fifty years waved at me from a ladder. I waved back with the enthusiasm of someone who had just survived their own driving. The whole scene smelled of wood smoke and damp earth and something faintly herbal, probably rosemary from the bushes lining the path.

Inside, the stone floors were cold enough to make me regret my sock choice immediately. I had packed for the Italy of summer brochures, not the Italy of actual late autumn. The owners had left the heating on low, thank goodness, and a small pile of logs beside the fireplace that I eyed with the determination of someone about to become a very mediocre fire builder. There was a moment, standing in that kitchen with its terracotta tiles and slightly wonky wooden beams, where I felt the particular loneliness of arriving somewhere beautiful alone. My partner was flying in the next morning, which meant one night of solo fire duty and probably a takeaway pizza from wherever in Fauglia might still be open in the off-season.

The pool was covered, obviously, its winter blanket making it look like a large blue present nobody was allowed to open. I had known this booking a pool property in October was slightly optimistic, yet there I stood, staring at it with the same expression I reserve for gym memberships in January. The surrounding garden was in that productive decay of autumn, tomato vines browning in their beds, grape leaves turning the colour of burnt sugar on the pergola. Everything felt paused, waiting, the whole property breathing out after a busy summer.

I found the local shop before it closed, managed to buy bread, cheese and a bottle of Chianti with my atrocious Italian. The woman behind the counter corrected my pronunciation with the patience of someone who has corrected many tourists before me. Back at the house, I built a fire that smoked more than burned, opened the wine, and sat with my inadequate socks warming slowly.

That first evening, the seasonal quiet pressed in. No holiday crowds, no pool splashing, just the distant sound of someone harvesting olives and my own slightly pathetic fire crackling. I realised, somewhere between the second glass and the third attempt at arranging logs, that this was exactly right. The autumn had stripped away the performance of a Tuscan holiday, the pressure to swim and sun and be seen. What remained was something more honest, the place as it actually lives through the year, and me, slightly cold, slightly ridiculous, very much present for it.