I have never been brilliant at reading maps, which is how I found myself reversing a hire car down a narrow Umbrian lane while three elderly gentlemen watched from a doorway, sipping espresso and offering no assistance whatsoever. We were attempting to reach our holiday property near Citta di Castello, and I had confidently ignored the sat-nav in favour of what I called "instinct" and my partner called "stubbornness." The October light was already beginning to soften, and the chestnut trees were dropping their leaves in that lazy, golden way they do in autumn, so I could not entirely blame my disorientation on my own incompetence. The season was shifting everything.

We arrived in late afternoon, when the sun sits lower and paints the stone farmhouses in shades of honey and amber. Our property sat among rolling hills that had been harvested weeks earlier, leaving stubbled fields that caught the light like brushed velvet. The pool was still open, technically, though nobody in their right mind would have braved it. I dipped a toe and yelped. My partner found this hilarious and filmed it. The water was that particular temperature that autumn brings - not quite cold enough to be refreshing, just cold enough to be a mistake.

The house itself had that wonderful smell of old stone and woodsmoke that seems particular to Umbrian properties in autumn. The owners had left the heating off, which made sense given the daytime temperatures still reached the low twenties, but by six o'clock the rooms began to cool rapidly. We discovered the wood-burning stove with the enthusiasm of people who have never actually started a fire without firelighters. Forty minutes of increasingly desperate blowing and rearranging of kindling produced more smoke than flame, and I developed a new respect for my ancestors.

What struck me most was how the season dictated everything. The vegetable garden was in that productive decline that October brings - tomatoes still clinging to vines, peppers turning wrinkly, pumpkins fattening in corners. We ate figs from a tree that dropped them with almost embarrassing generosity. In summer, I imagine, the place buzzes with activity, but autumn brought a slower rhythm. The owners had mentioned that most guests came in July or August, and I began to understand both the appeal and what we were missing. The long warm evenings, presumably. The impromptu swimming. The not needing to carry a jumper everywhere.

Yet there was something deeply satisfying about the autumn version. We walked to a nearby village one morning, perhaps three miles through woodland paths carpeted with fallen leaves, and encountered nobody. The trattoria we found was serving wild boar stew, which felt aggressively seasonal. The proprietor seemed faintly surprised to see tourists, which I found rather charming. We drank a local Sangiovese that tasted of the same earth we had been walking on, and I had one of those moments of gentle realisation that I am not very good at doing nothing, and that perhaps I should practice more.

The evenings drew in quickly, which I had not properly anticipated. By half past six it was properly dark, and the house felt very quiet and very old. We took to lighting candles, not for atmosphere but because the electric lighting in the kitchen was somewhat dim, and this accidental romance suited the season perfectly. I read more in a week than I had in the previous three months.

On our final morning, mist filled the valley below the house, and the world seemed reduced to our immediate surroundings. I stood outside with coffee cooling in my hands, watching the sun burn through slowly, and felt genuinely grateful for my rubbish map-reading. Summer would have been different. Busier, brighter, easier in many ways. But autumn had given us something quieter, something that required a bit more patience and offered a different kind of warmth. I would return in a heartbeat, though perhaps with a better sat-nav and slightly more competent fire-lighting skills.