We had come to Bleggio by car, traversing mountain roads to reach this remote area of the Dolomites directly north of Lake Garda. Driving from southern Trentino we headed down towards Riva, a tourist town on the northern shores of the lake, and then due north, gaining altitude as we zipped up a valley pass. Sheer peaks and dense forest penned us in the higher we went, until we reached a plateau of rolling hills and a herb-flecked meadow.

It was to this protected alpine world that my grandmother, great aunt and two great uncles had fled as children in the final years of the second world war, living alone on a small farm while their parents were forced to remain in their occupied hometown of Ala. This was a journey made by many children at the time; when Italy declared itself an allied nation the country fell into civil war and fascist troops took hold of the north of the country. Bleggio was a safe haven far removed from the fighting.

We had come – me, my mother, her partner and my girlfriend – to explore this place that had protected our extended family. The exact location of their hideout was a mystery due to the fact that my relations, Maria, Liliana, Desiderio and Franco, had existed here as sfollati, an Italian term for displaced people, meaning they had no official records attached to them. There were blurry childhood memories of a mountainside farmhouse and keeping chickens, but nothing concrete. In lieu of a precise location, we had plotted a walk across the valley from east to west ending on Cima Sera, a peak overlooking the entire region.

Our base was Maso Pra Cavai, a guesthouse and family-run farm. We arrived late in the day but received a warm welcome from the owner, Rodolfo Brochetti, who served us delicious plates of a risotto made with cooking apples (half simmered with the rice, half added just before serving). The Brochetti farm, like many in the area, specialises in walnuts and Rodolfo ended the evening with walnut liqueur, pickled walnuts and a large walnut cake.

We began walking early the next day from Stenico, a village perched on one of the highest points in the region, where the ruling prince-bishops had kept a castle from which to cast an eye out over their lands. Sticking my head out of an arched stone window I took in the rolling expanse below and found myself wondering where my family might have lived and what their life would have been like.

As far as we were aware, the four siblings – the youngest was six and the eldest 14 – were driven up the same pass we had taken into the valley and dropped off somewhere remote with a supply of grains, preserves and livestock. A local priest would have been paid some money to keep an eye on them but they were largely left to their own devices. They would have felt incredibly free and safe here but there would have been the anxiety of living away from their parents and all that was familiar to them, until the family were eventually reunited following the end of the war and Italian liberation.

Further down the valley in Madice, strange rickety buildings were packed into rows on its sloping streets. Each home had a cave-like entrance and a large wooden hayloft on top, accessible only by a curving stone ramp. We stopped at the regional municipal office on the off-chance that they would have some information, but the administrators confirmed that they had no records of families staying during the war. Instead, they suggested that the best resource was local people, custodians of a wealth of oral history in this region that is far richer than any state archive.

As we made our way through Bleggio, village after village, it was hard to avoid hunting for signs of my relatives, continually feeling as though I was about to discover some clue or proof of their existence here. A mile or so from the mountain I obsessed over a tiny chapel at the side of the road, its walls covered with graffitied names dating back to the war. I hoped naively to find the names of my family scrawled into the side – suppose they had lived nearby? – but there was no sign.

After clambering up slanting beech forest and rocky scrub, we reached the peak of Cima Sera and sat down to watch the land unfolding beneath us. Far away was castle Stenico, now barely visible. From up here it was easier to accept that this trip was never going to throw up a miraculous find: there was no perfect alpine cottage waiting with a lit fire and a smiling portrait of my family. Yet just being in this region, knowing that our family were once kept secure somewhere in this hilly expanse, left us with a feeling of having discovered something significant about them, and getting a glimpse into their childhood.

Leaving the mountain, we decided to return next year, to interview some of the older community. Beyond the draw of personal history, this region holds so many stories from an overlooked period of Italian history and it is important to listen to them before they disappear for ever.

Way to go

Travelling by car from London to north Italy costs from £200 factoring in ferries, fuel and toll roads (rome2rio.com). Flights from London to Verona cost from £45 one way. Accommodation at Maso Pra Cavai (masopracavai.com) costs from £30pp a night B&B, plus £12.50pp for the set menu: four courses including wine