I have never been very good at reading maps, and my sat nav has developed what I can only describe as a personality disorder. So when I set off for a week in a Stummerberg in Lower Austria, I was already bracing myself for chaos. What I had not planned for was the sheer comedy of missing my turning, ending up on a farm track, and being stared at by a very unimpressed herd of cattle while I attempted a seventeen-point turn.

The journey from Vienna had been straightforward enough, or so I thought. The Weinviertel region rolled past in a blur of vineyards and sleepy villages, and I was feeling rather pleased with myself. Then I took a wrong turn somewhere near Eggenburg, and suddenly my little hire car was bumping along a gravel path between sunflower fields. The sat nav, in a rare moment of clarity, simply said "recalculating" with what sounded like a sigh. I wound down the window to ask a passing cyclist for directions, but he just smiled, pointed vaguely towards a wood, and cycled on. Very helpful.

By the time I found the actual road to the property, I had discovered two things by pure accident. The first was a tiny chapel tucked into a copse of oak trees, its door slightly ajar, with candles still burning inside and a handwritten note asking visitors to please close it behind them. I stood there for a good five minutes, feeling like I had stumbled into someone else's quiet afternoon. The second was a roadside stall selling homemade Marillenmarmelade, run by an elderly woman who spoke no English and simply gestured until I bought three jars. I do not even like apricot jam particularly, but it felt rude to refuse.

The Stummerberg itself was a revelation after all that drama. These traditional farmsteads, with their thick walls and wooden balconies overflowing with geraniums, have a way of making you feel instantly settled. Mine sat at the edge of a village too small to feature in any guidebook, with a view down a valley of patchwork fields and, in the distance, the faint outline of the Manhartsberg. My landlady, a brisk woman called Hilda, showed me round with practised efficiency and left me a bottle of Gruner Veltliner in the fridge "for the shock." She was not wrong.

That first evening, rather than staying put as any sensible person would, I decided to explore on foot. This was, predictably, another navigational disaster. I followed what I thought was a marked trail, missed a turning, and found myself in a clearing where someone had built an extraordinary sculpture entirely from old farm tools. Pitchforks, scythes, rusted ploughshares, all welded together into something between modern art and a very aggressive scarecrow. There was no sign, no explanation, just this bizarre monument in the middle of nowhere. I took a photograph and have still no idea who made it or why.

Getting properly lost became something of a theme. The next morning I set out for what Hilda had described as "a nice little walk to the stream" and somehow ended up at a vineyard where a family were harvesting grapes by hand. Rather than shooing me away, they pressed a glass of sturm into my hand and carried on working around me. The fermented grape juice went straight to my head on an empty stomach, and I wobbled back to the Stummerberg via a route I could never replicate, passing a ruined stone wall where wild plums were dropping onto the path.

There is something peculiarly freeing about having no idea where you are. Back home I plan everything, colour-code my calendar, arrive ten minutes early to everything. Here, I was perpetually late, perpetually confused, and perpetually delighted. A wrong turning led me to a bakery in a village with no name, where the bread was still warm and the baker refused payment because I was "the lost English." Another accidental detour took me to a pond where locals were fishing for carp, and I sat on the bank for an hour watching them in companionable silence.

By the third day I had stopped even pretending to follow a plan. I would drive until something looked interesting, then stop. This is how I found the abandoned railway line, now a walking path through tunnels of elderflower and hawthorn, and the small museum of agricultural tools that was only open because the curator happened to be gardening outside when I peered through the gate. He gave me a personal tour in broken English and German, mostly demonstrating how various scythes worked while I nodded earnestly.

The thing about hidden gems is that you cannot search for them deliberately. The moment you try, they evaporate. I spent one determined afternoon following actual recommendations from a leaflet, and every single place was pleasant enough but somehow flat. The magic was in the accidents, the wrong turns, the moments when you are slightly uncomfortable and completely unsure.

On my final morning I got lost one last time, driving in circles around the same three fields until I spotted a familiar-looking cow. I laughed out loud, alone in the car, at the ridiculousness of it all. Then I found my way back to the main road, apricot jam rattling in the passenger footwell, and headed home with a boot full of wine and no photographs of anything famous.

I would not have it any other way.