The sat-nav gave up on us somewhere between Rome and nowhere, which is how I found myself reversing a hire car down a gravel track narrower than my patience, convinced I was about to become a permanent feature of the Umbrian countryside. I had missed the turning for Narni by a solid two miles, distracted by a field of sunflowers standing to attention in the late September heat. They were the last of the season, their heads heavy and drooping, and I had thought, how lovely, before realising I was now hopelessly lost and my phone had decided this was the perfect moment to overheat.

September in Umbria is a tricksy month. The tourists have mostly scarpered, leaving the hill towns to the locals and the stubborn few of us who prefer our holidays with a side of agricultural reality. The mornings come cool and misty, the afternoons still punish you for wearing jeans, and by evening you are reaching for a cardigan you swore you would not need. I had packed for summer. The weather had other ideas.

When I finally found the place, bumping down a cypress-lined drive with my dignity in tatters, the first thing that struck me was the smell. Not the polished fragrance of a hotel lobby, but something earthier, more honest. Damp stone, woodsmoke from somewhere distant, and that particular green scent of olive trees preparing for harvest. The property sat perched on a slope, its terracotta roof tiles faded to the colour of old terracotta pots, the sort your grandmother keeps geraniums in. A swimming pool glinted below, still open but already looking slightly forlorn, the water too chilly for anything more committed than a brave paddle.

My hosts had left the key under a ceramic frog by the door, which felt very trusting given that I had just spent forty minutes proving I could not follow basic directions. Inside, the rooms were deliciously cool, the thick walls doing what centuries of construction had intended. Someone had left a bowl of late figs on the kitchen table, split and weeping with sweetness, and a note explaining that the walnut tree was dropping its fruit early this year due to the dry spell. I ate three figs standing at the sink, watching swallows gather on the telephone wires, their numbers growing by the hour as if they were holding a meeting about departure dates.

That evening I walked down to the village, if you could call a cluster of houses and one determined bar a village. The light was doing that golden thing it does in late summer, stretching everything into softness, making even the potholes look picturesque. An old man was sweeping leaves from his terrace with a broom that had seen better decades. He nodded at me without surprise, as if English people in inadequate footwear appeared here regularly. I suppose in September, perhaps they do.

I ordered a beer and sat outside, watching the swallows turn to bats, feeling the temperature drop perceptibly as the sun slipped behind the hills. The barman brought me some toasted bread with new olive oil, still cloudy, still peppery, this year's harvest not yet begun but the last pressing still good enough to make you close your eyes. A dog barked somewhere in the valley, and then the silence rushed back in, complete and unapologetic.

I thought about how I had rushed to book this trip, panicked by the fading summer, desperate to squeeze one more holiday from a year that had already taken too much. September had felt like a compromise, a second choice. But sitting there, with the chill creeping through my thin jacket and the stars beginning to assert themselves in a sky too dark for London eyes, I understood something about letting go. The sunflowers were finished, the figs were ending, the swallows were leaving. There was nothing diminished about any of it. The season was simply doing what seasons do, and I was lucky enough to be there, imperfectly dressed and temporarily lost, to witness it.

The barman lit a candle as I paid, more for atmosphere than necessity, and I walked back up the hill in proper darkness for the first time in months, guided by the smell of woodsmoke and the particular quality of silence that belongs to places where agriculture still sets the rhythm of life. Tomorrow I would visit Narni proper, explore the old town, perhaps find the bridge that gives the place its name. But for now, there was a bowl of figs to finish, a cardigan to hunt for, and the particular pleasure of being exactly where the season wanted me to be.