I arrive in Amalfi on a filthy spring night. Water runs off the snaking road through the hills from Naples, treacherously bendy at the best of times, and the rain pelting the car windscreen makes the journey even slower than usual. Far below, the sea is churning and grey, not dissimilar to the English coastline I’m used to. It’s a difficult image to reconcile with the picture-perfect scenes I’d seen of this glitzy coastline, the poster child for endless Italian summers. 

Amalfi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, an area of outstanding natural beauty, but in the drizzle, the faded coastal town centre leaves a lot to be desired. Still, I’m here to see lemons, not beaches, and the miles upon miles of lemon trees that line the Amalfi coast are used to this sort of weather.