The satnav had other ideas about how to reach our holiday let in Citta di Castello. Instead of gliding through Umbrian countryside like a travel brochure, we spent forty-five minutes circling what I can only describe as an industrial estate on the outskirts of Perugia, while my partner muttered darkly about Italian road signage and I pretended not to have been the one who programmed the coordinates. By the time we finally spotted the stone walls and terracotta roofs of the proper town, I had eaten an entire packet of airport biscuits and developed a quite personal grudge against a roundabout near a Fiat dealership.

We arrived at the property as the afternoon light was turning everything golden, which felt like a small compensation. The owner, a wiry chap called Franco who spoke rapid Italian interspersed with surprising Yorkshire expressions, handed us keys and pointed out the pool with the pride of someone showing off a new grandchild. "Heated," he said, tapping the side. "But you won't need it. Bloody boiling." The Yorkshire bit, not the Italian.

The first thing that struck me was the quiet. Not silence exactly, because there were cicadas going at it with impressive commitment in the olive trees, but a kind of spaciousness to the sound. No traffic hum, no neighbour's telly bleeding through walls. Just heat and light and the occasional clatter of someone doing something leisurely in a nearby garden. I stood by the pool with a glass of something cold and local, and felt my shoulders drop about three inches. The satnav debacle already seemed faintly ridiculous, like worrying about a missed bus when you've arrived at the seaside.

Our first morning set the pattern. We woke without alarm, made coffee in the small kitchen that smelled faintly of rosemary from a plant on the windowsill, and then simply stopped. I had brought three books and had vague intentions of sightseeing, of being the sort of person who properly explores. Instead I read twenty pages, swam two lazy lengths, read another ten pages, and fell asleep on a lounger with the book splayed across my chest. My partner did much the same, occasionally making pronouncements about maybe walking into town later, neither of us moving with any conviction.

We did eventually wander into Citta di Castello proper, a slow amble of perhaps twenty minutes through lanes bordered by high stone walls and unexpected bursts of bougainvillea. The town has that slightly worn, comfortable beauty of somewhere that has been important for centuries and no longer needs to prove anything. We sat in a small piazza with coffees that cost embarrassingly little, watched elderly men conduct what appeared to be the same conversation they had been having since 1974, and agreed that this counted as cultural engagement.

The gentle self-reflection came on day three, I think. I was floating in the pool, staring at clouds that were doing something interesting but not urgently so, and realised I had been measuring holidays by how much I did. Museums ticked off, restaurants noted, photographs taken as evidence of experience. Here, the experience was the absence of all that. The doing very little was not a failure of planning but the entire point. I am not naturally good at this. My brain likes a checklist, a sense of productive time. But Umbria in late summer does not accommodate hurry. The heat presses down, the light slows, and you find yourself adapting or being quietly miserable.

We adapted. Morning swims became non-negotiable. Afternoons were for reading until the words blurred, then napping until the light shifted. Some evenings we drove the few minutes to a local trattoria, others we made simple meals from the excellent nearby market and ate on the terrace watching swallows dart through the cooling air. We spoke less than usual, not because of any tension but because there seemed less need to fill space with words.

On our final morning, I woke early and sat with coffee as mist rose from the valley below. A neighbour's dog barked once, thoughtfully, then stopped. I thought about the industrial estate in Perugia, the biscuit crumbs in the hire car, the initial frustration of being lost. Without that mishap, I suspect I would have arrived with my checklist intact, determined to be a proper tourist. Getting lost forced a slower entry, a kind of accidental preparation for the rhythm that followed.

Franco appeared to collect the keys and asked if we'd had a good holiday. "Bloody marvellous," I told him, and meant it in both languages.