I have never been brilliant at reading maps, and my first impression of Citta di Castello was me standing in a petrol station forecourt just outside town, turning a folded paper map upside down while my other half sighed in that particular way he has perfected over fifteen years. We had driven up from Perugia through countryside so green it almost hurt your eyes, the April rain having done its work thoroughly, and now we were five minutes from our holiday let and utterly defeated by a one-way system.

The mishap, if you can call it that, was entirely my fault. I had insisted on the scenic route. The sat nav had suggested something sensible and direct, but I had spotted a smaller road winding through hills and announced, with the confidence of a fool, that it would be "more authentic." It was authentic, certainly. Authentically muddy, authentically narrow, and authentically featuring a tractor coming the other way that forced us to reverse for nearly half a mile while the driver grinned and waved as if this happened daily. By the time we reached the property, the car looked like we had entered it in a rally.

The seasonal timing shaped everything about that first afternoon. April in Umbria sits in that delicious gap where the winter crowds have vanished but the summer heat has not yet arrived. We pulled into the gravel drive of the property and the first thing that struck me was the smell. Wet earth, woodsmoke from somewhere nearby, and something floral I could not name. The garden was damp and exuberant, everything growing with that slightly desperate energy plants have in spring before the dry months arrive. The pool cover was still on, looking rather forlorn, and I remember feeling a brief pang about that before noticing how the light fell across the terrace.

The terrace was the revelation. Despite my map incompetence and the car's new mud livery, standing there with a cup of tea made from the emergency supplies we had brought, I understood why people come to this part of Umbria in spring rather than August. The light is softer. You can sit outside without seeking shade every ten minutes. The hills roll away in layers of green that shift from emerald to something almost grey-blue in the distance, and because the trees were only just coming into full leaf, you could still see the shape of the land rather than just a wall of foliage.

The property itself felt wrapped in that particular spring stillness. Not the busy stillness of high summer when cicadas scream and everyone is at the pool, but something more tentative. Birdsong carried clearly. In the evening, we heard what I think was a nightingale, though my bird identification is about as reliable as my map reading. The kitchen was cold when we arrived, and it took the little wall heater a while to knock the edge off, which made the whole arrival feel like properly settling in rather than just dumping bags and changing into swimwear.

Walking into town that first evening, the streets were quiet in that post-winter, pre-tourist way. A few locals, some shop shutters still down for the season. We ate at a place that had the heating on inside, which felt almost indulgent, and drank red wine that tasted of the same damp earth we had smelled earlier. I remember thinking that arriving in April meant we were seeing the place before it had put on its summer performance, and there was something honest about that.

The mishap with the map became our running joke for the week. Every time we went anywhere, one of us would ask if I fancied the "authentic route." But honestly? Getting slightly lost in spring Umbria, with everything growing and the light doing that particular soft thing it does, was probably the best introduction we could have had. The season made it forgiving. In July I suspect I would have been genuinely furious about the tractor incident. In April, I laughed all the way to the property, and I am still laughing now.