I went on holiday last week to Lake Garda in Italy and saw some of the most spectacular scenery I've ever seen. It's not the sort of holiday we usually take; we usually take a five-day, Monday to Friday break.

But my sister organised this because she's not well and she liked the idea of brothers and sister having a holiday together – the first since we were children.

It went well; most of us were still speaking when we came back. I almost feel a bit guilty saying I've spent a week in Italy when I also spend a lot of time telling you that dairy farmers don't have any money but, as we flew from Bristol, it turns out you can hardly get on the plane without tripping over a dairy farmer, or a West Country Life reader.

Anyway, why should I feel guilty, dairy farmers have as much right to a holiday as anyone else.

Over many years I've been lucky enough to go abroad a fair bit courtesy of a good friend who always had a lot more money than me but who said that it was to be enjoyed and he (luckily) enjoyed my company.

So I've developed a habit of having a haircut abroad and buying a hat as a souvenir. When I told my brother I intended to get a haircut he went in to raptures, assuming that language difficulties would deliver a disaster.

But a bad haircut only ever lasts a fortnight and the most embarrassing aspect of the whole episode was when he came into the shop with me and said to the old man attending to two ladies under driers: "You cut-ee the hair-ee?"

The haircut actually turned out fine, possibly better than I usually get, but the gossip was nonexistent. Getting the hat proved more difficult; I couldn't determine what was a typical Italian hat and it was so hot that most were straw in small trilby shape.

I eventually bought one of those and it made me look a bit like Errol Flynn in an early production of Robin Hood, but that's not a problem either because it will spend the rest of its life on the wall with my other souvenirs.

A couple of weeks before we went away I developed an odd blemish on my hand. To start with, I didn't know what it was so I gave it a blast with the antibiotic aerosol we use on the cow's feet. This made it bigger and quite nasty so I switched to ringworm treatment and kept it out of sight with a plaster.

The only plasters we have in this house have teddy bears on them, but no matter. This didn't seem to cure it either, so I showed it to the doctor in the pub one night and he thought it was an infection from a cut or scratch and that the foot aerosol would cure it.

But it flared up again on holiday so I took my hand to a pharmacist. He tut-tutted a couple of times, shook his head and gave me some antibiotic ointment. By then I knew it wanted antibiotics of some sort – and it cleared up in three days.

I've now got a nice round scar on the side of my hand that I've told my younger grand children is a bullet wound from the World War I. They are very impressed, the older ones just roll their eyes and ignore me – but they don't spoil the story with the truth.

I brought something else home from Italy, in my memory anyway: it's spotless. Thousands of people from all over Europe enjoying a popular holiday destination and not a piece of litter to be seen.

Have we as a nation become filthy and untidy? I suspect from this evidence we have. I don't feel guilty because I don't do it myself but collectively it happens, so that we have allowed it to become a norm. It must cost a fortune to pick up and the contrast between here and Italy is a disgrace.

Even around here in a low-populated rural area the verge trimmers are about and as they chop up the grass and the cow parsley, they put all the litter deposited on to the side of the road on display.

I picked up a few words of Italian, like buona sera and Ferrari and Lambretta but what I miss most of all is getting up early and going to a cafe for an early morning cup of coffee and enjoying the sun and the lake, just five yards away.

By the end of the week the locals on their way to work were all saying good morning to me. By Sunday we were back in the kitchen at home with baked beans on toast. The dog was pleased to see me but he tried not to show it and leant his body against my legs with a mournful face – not a wag in sight.

I made my peace with him and after about a quarter of an hour of cuddles he seemed to forgive me.

The next morning in the Discovery for a ride round I saw they've done the silage while we were away – the agricultural equivalent of lifting the lid off the linen basket – and the top fields are laid bare for us to see.

There were hares everywhere, some nearly fully grown leverets. We (the dog and I) counted 20, though we could have been counting some hares twice.

It put me in good spirits to see so many and when I ran into the keeper later that day he was full of hare stories as well. I'm not sure if I ran into him or if he sneaked up on me, but he was in an expansive mood.

"We were lamping foxes last night and I told them, (I don't know who "them" are and don't really want to know), to count the hares we saw. We reckon we saw 69 – thirty came past me on one ride alone."

"Boy you've got some hares about you."

I've heard this 69 figure before so it could be, as they say on Radio Four, repetition, but we do have a nice lot of hares about.