I have never been so relieved to see a swimming pool in my life, and that includes the time I fell fully clothed into a hotel fountain in Barcelona. But I am getting ahead of myself.

The journey to San Venanzo had started with such promise. My wife had packed the car with military precision, the kids were actually not arguing for once, and I had even remembered to download the route onto my phone in case the signal disappeared in the Umbrian hills. What I had not accounted for was my own spectacular ability to misread a sat nav.

Somewhere between Orvieto and absolutely nowhere, I took what I confidently declared to be a shortcut. It was not a shortcut. It was a gravel track that grew narrower and more enthusiastic about its contours with every hundred metres. By the time I realised my error, reversing was impossible and pressing on felt like the only option that preserved any dignity. The kids found this hilarious, naturally. My wife adopted the particular silence that means she is choosing not to say something.

Forty minutes later, we emerged from what I can only describe as a goat's idea of a driveway, covered in dust and whatever spiritual residue comes from questioning every life choice that led to this moment. The villa sat there, utterly unbothered, bathed in late afternoon sun and looking like something from a film set. Pale stone walls, terracotta roof tiles, that particular shade of green shutters that only seem to exist in central Italy. It was almost insultingly beautiful given what we had just put ourselves through.

The key was where the owner had promised, in a little lockbox that made me feel like a proper grown-up holidaymaker rather than someone who had just navigated by blind luck and stubbornness. The door opened with a satisfying weight to it, and we stepped into cool tiled floors and that smell of old stone and recent cleaning that somehow signals you have arrived somewhere proper.

The kids bolted straight through to the back, drawn by the promise of the pool we had seen in the photographs. I followed more slowly, still processing, still brushing dust from my forearms, still hearing the gravel crunch in my memory. And then I saw it. The pool, yes, but more than that. The view. Rolling hills patched with olive groves and vineyards, a landscape so classically Umbrian it almost felt staged. The kind of view that makes you forget, temporarily, that you are a person who gets lost on purpose-built roads.

I lowered myself into a lounger with the particular heaviness of someone who has been mildly traumatised by their own incompetence. My wife handed me a cold beer from the fridge, which I had not asked for but absolutely needed. The kids were already in the water, shrieking about the temperature in the way children do regardless of whether it is actually cold or not.

That first evening, we did not venture out. We unpacked slowly, lazily, finding the little quirks of the place. The kitchen with its terracotta tiles and slightly wonky drawer. The bedrooms with their heavy wooden furniture and views of either the pool or the hills depending on your luck in the allocation lottery. I got the hills, which felt like a small compensation for earlier events.

We ate bread and cheese and tomatoes on the terrace as the light went soft and golden, and I found myself doing that thing I always do on the first night of a cottage holiday. Running through the mental checklist of what we had brought, what we had forgotten, whether the wifi password actually worked. But mostly just sitting there, feeling the particular stillness of a place that is not home and therefore carries no obligations.

My youngest asked if we could do the gravel track again tomorrow. I said no with perhaps more force than necessary. My wife laughed, properly this time, not the strained variety from earlier. And I realised, watching the last light catch the olive trees on the ridge, that this was exactly why we did this. The mishaps, the dust, the mild panic. They all dissolved into something else once you were actually there, actually still, actually present in a way that daily life rarely permits.

Tomorrow we might walk to the village, or drive the proper road to Orvieto, or simply do very little at all. That is the thing about a place like San Venanzo. It does not demand anything of you except that you slow down enough to notice it. After the journey we had, that felt like exactly the right requirement.