I have never been so happy to see a pine tree in all my life. Twelve hours after leaving a drizzly Luton Airport, I was standing in the car park of our Rosolina Mare holiday home, watching my partner try to wrestle a wheeled suitcase out of a hire car that seemed to have shrunk during the journey. The case caught on the seatbelt, tipped sideways, and deposited three pairs of my socks onto the hot tarmac. One rolled under the car. I left it there as an offering to the holiday gods.

The drive down from Venice Marco Polo had been straightforward enough, though my navigation skills deserve some scrutiny. I took us on a brief tour of what I can only describe as agricultural nowhere, convinced that a shortcut through flat green fields would bring us out near the coast. It brought us out near a very confused farmer instead. He waved. We waved back. I turned the car around and found the actual road, which had been helpfully signposted the entire time.

Rosolina Mare itself announced itself with a suddenness I found rather charming. One moment there were reeds and drainage channels, all very Po Delta and mysterious, and then there were bungalows, pine trees, and the faint but definite smell of the Adriatic. The estate had that particular hush of seaside places that have not quite woken up for the evening. Families were drifting back from the beach with damp towels. Someone was cooking something involving garlic at improbable volume.

Our place was one of a cluster of terraced bungalows, the sort that look modest in photographs and turn out to be exactly as modest in person, which I consider a refreshing honesty in holiday accommodation. I fumbled with the key box code, inputting the wrong numbers twice because I had written them down in a notebook and then apparently translated them into a private cipher. My partner stood with her arms folded, offering commentary. The door clicked open eventually, and we stepped inside with that particular theatrical pause you make when entering a new space, as if the room might need a moment to compose itself.

The first impression was coolness, which in late June felt like being embraced by a very sensible friend. Terracotta tiles underfoot, basic furniture that had seen better decades, and a kitchen area that immediately announced itself as the territory of someone who plans to cook simple things and wash up afterwards with reasonable cheerfulness. I opened the fridge. It was empty except for a small ice tray and a faint smell of previous summers. This was correct. This was how it should be.

I walked straight through to the back, pushed open a door I hoped led somewhere useful, and found a small patio with plastic chairs and a view of more pine trees. Beyond them, if you strained, you could sense the sea rather than see it. I sat down heavily in one of the chairs, which creaked but held, and felt something in my shoulders release that had been clenched since approximately the M25.

My partner appeared with two glasses of supermarket prosecco, warm from the boot but welcome beyond measure. We sat there in the fading light, listening to Italian radio from somewhere nearby and the distant shouts of children who were not going to bed regardless of what their parents thought. A gecko darted across the wall. I chose to take this as a good omen.

That lost sock under the car, I should note, was never recovered. I checked the next morning and it had vanished entirely, possibly into local folklore. I like to imagine it living a full life somewhere in the Veneto, wiser and more travelled than its partner still languishing in my drawer at home.