I have never been a natural navigator, and my family's decision to let me lead the way to our holiday home in Lamon was, in hindsight, a spectacular error of judgement. We had flown into Venice Marco Polo, picked up a hire car that smelled faintly of pine air freshener and regret, and set off towards the Veneto hills with nothing but a printed map and misplaced confidence. Three wrong turns, one accidental tour of a vineyard, and a deeply confusing encounter with a roundabout later, we found ourselves on a narrow lane that seemed to narrow further with every metre. I was convinced we were heading towards someone's private drive, possibly their actual living room. My wife was making that particular face she reserves for my mistakes. The children had stopped asking "are we there yet" and had moved on to "are we lost forever."

Then the lane opened up, and there it was. A stone farmhouse with a warm terracotta roof, sitting among rolling green hills that looked almost impossibly Italian. The kind of view that makes you forget, at least temporarily, that you have just spent forty minutes arguing with a sat nav in two languages. This was our base for the week, a proper cottage-style place with wooden beams, a fireplace we immediately decided we would use even if it was not quite cold enough, and a kitchen that smelled of herbs from the garden outside. I stood in the doorway with our bags still in the car and felt that particular relief of arriving somewhere that immediately feels right.

The mishap of our journey became, within minutes, part of the story we would tell. The owner, a friendly local woman who spoke better English than my Italian, which is limited to ordering coffee and apologising, showed us around with patient enthusiasm. She pointed out the covered terrace where we would eat most of our meals, the barbecue that looked like it had seen many happy summers, and the garden where the children could run without me needing to hover. There was a swimming pool too, though the September air meant we would need to be brave, or foolish, to try it. My son announced he was both.

What struck me most was how quickly the pace slowed. We were only a few miles from the village of Lamon itself, close enough to wander down for bread and coffee in the morning, far enough to feel properly removed from everything. The hills around us were dotted with similar stone buildings, smallholdings with vegetable gardens, the occasional dog barking at nothing in particular. It was not dramatic or showy. There were no grand tourist attractions within easy reach, no checklist of sights to tick off. That was rather the point.

I found myself, that first evening, sitting on the terrace with a glass of local wine that cost less than a coffee back home, watching the light change over the hills. The children were inside, squabbling good-naturedly over who had the better bedroom. My wife was laughing at something, probably me. I thought about how often I plan holidays around doing things, seeing things, rushing from one experience to the next. Here, the doing was the not doing. The pleasure was in the space, the simple fact of being somewhere quiet together.

We would walk to Lamon for provisions, cook meals that took longer than necessary, play cards by the fireplace I had insisted on lighting. We would fail to swim in the pool, attempt basic Italian with patient shopkeepers, and accumulate small memories that would last longer than any photograph. But that first evening, still slightly giddy from our ridiculous journey, I simply sat and breathed in the smell of woodsmoke and herbs and somewhere-distant cooking, and felt properly, contentedly, arrived.