The holiday villas changing the way we travel

It was a misty Thursday morning, with the low Tuscan hills’ muted tones in the distance, when we set out with a six-year-old Lagotto Romagnolo in pursuit of something my children both love and hate.
Truffles – the fungus, not the chocolates – are catnip in my house when they come in the form of musky oil on crisps (£3.95 at our local deli). On pasta, they’re less well received. But Antonia (six) and Henry (four) were suitably impressed with the set-up: a hipster and a farmer in pursuit of a high-value product; if there was a scent of earthy delights, there was also more than a whiff of a Famous Five mission.
We followed Paulo, president of the local truffle-hunting association, who was dressed in camouflage and accompanied by his dog, Millie, past a cemetery and into the hills, where we met our translator, Lorenzo, the landowner, who had abandoned a tech-focused life in cosmopolitan Siena to get back to nature (well, the sort of nature where one wears skinny jeans and Ray-Bans) with his family.
Millie had been in training from the age of two months: Paulo hid morsels of truffles under the ground or in the grass, making a game of chasing down this fragrant harvest.