I have never been so happy to see a gravel driveway in all my life. After twelve hours of travel that involved a delayed flight to Pisa, a hire car with suspiciously vague fuel instructions, and my other half confidently navigating us down what turned out to be a farm track, we finally crunched to a halt outside our Maremma in southern Tuscany. I stepped out, stretched, and immediately dropped my phone face-down onto a terracotta tile. The screen survived. My dignity did not.

The property sat low and honey-coloured against the hillside, all weathered shutters and climbing jasmine that someone had clearly spent years encouraging. A woman called Luisa emerged from behind a lemon tree, wiping her hands on her apron and looking not the slightest bit surprised to find two dishevelled Brits arguing about whose fault the farm track was. She handed us a key the size of a small fork and gestured toward a covered terrace where a bottle of local Vermentino sweated gently in an ice bucket. I could have kissed her. I did not, because I am English and we have standards.

The first thing you notice about a Maremma is the quiet. Not silence exactly, because cicadas do not understand silence, but a particular quality of stillness that makes you aware of your own breathing. We spent that first afternoon doing absolutely nothing beyond transferring ourselves from sun lounger to shallow end of the pool and back again, like very lazy lizards. I read three pages of a novel, fell asleep, woke with a crick in my neck and the certain knowledge that this was precisely how the afternoon was meant to unfold.

Luisa had left us a loaf of unsalted bread, some olive oil in a chipped jug, and tomatoes still warm from her garden. We tore at these like people who had forgotten cutlery existed, watching the light change from harsh white to something softer and more forgiving. My other half attempted to identify the birds calling from the cypress trees. He failed comprehensively. We agreed this did not matter.

The following days settled into a rhythm so gentle it barely qualified as rhythm at all. Mornings began with coffee on that terrace, watching mist lift from the valley below while we planned ambitious excursions to nearby hill towns. By ten o'clock these plans had typically dissolved into another hour by the pool, then perhaps a wander down to the village for a panino and a glance at the newspaper headlines we could not quite be bothered to translate properly. The village, I should say, was nothing grand, just a handful of houses and a bar where old men played cards with the commitment of professional athletes. We went most days. They never acknowledged us, which felt like a sort of acceptance.

I had packed running shoes, hiking boots, and a guidebook with earnest marginalia. They remained in my case like reproachful strangers. Instead I read half a detective novel, forgot the plot, started again, and enjoyed it more the second time. I learned that my other half snores less aggressively when horizontal outdoors. I discovered that Tuscan sunshine has a particular weight to it, a physical presence that slows your thoughts to match your movements.

On our fourth day we did manage a walk to a nearby vineyard, perhaps two miles through scrubland that smelled of thyme and dry earth. The owner poured us samples of Sangiovese and talked about soil composition until my eyes glazed with genuine pleasure rather than boredom. We bought two bottles and carried them home like trophies, though we both knew they would be drunk on that same terrace with no ceremony whatsoever.

I kept thinking I should feel guilty about this laziness. At home I measure days by tasks completed, emails answered, miles covered. Here the achievement was in the not-doing, in letting the afternoon stretch unmarked by anything beyond the decision to move into shade or sun. It is a skill, I think, this deliberate stillness. One I had forgotten I ever possessed.

Our last evening, Luisa returned with figs from her tree and instructions for the wood-fired oven we had been too timid to use. We managed pizza with charred edges and uneven toppings, eaten as the sky turned that particular violet you only seem to get in Tuscany, or perhaps only when you are not rushing to notice it. My phone, still miraculously uncracked, stayed inside. The farm track, on the way back to Pisa, seemed almost charming.

I have the tan lines to prove we did very little, and the strange peacefulness that comes from having done so deliberately. The running shoes remain unworn. I suspect they always will.