I have never been so grateful for a broken sat-nav in my life. There we were, my partner and I, crawling through the Salzburg countryside in our hire car, convinced we were minutes from our holiday let. The robotic voice had other ideas. "Turn left," it commanded, straight into a field of very unimpressed cows. We turned around, laughed until our sides hurt, and promptly got ourselves completely lost.

That wrong turn became the making of our trip.

We were meant to be staying at a place called St. Koloman, somewhere near the village of the same name. The NOVASOL listing had promised a traditional Austrian farmhouse, mountain views, the whole charming package. What it had not prepared us for was the accidental tour of rural Salzburg we took trying to find it. We bumped along lanes barely wide enough for a bicycle, past wooden barns that looked like they had stood since Mozart's day, through patches of forest where the afternoon light came through in stripes.

Somewhere near St. Koloman proper, we gave up on technology entirely. Pulled over beside a tiny chapel with a crooked spire, no sign explaining what it was. My partner suggested we walk a bit, stretch our legs, maybe find someone to ask directions. Instead we found a path behind the chapel that led down through birch trees to a stream so clear you could count the stones on the bottom. A wooden bench sat there, weathered grey, facing the water. No plaque, no information board, no other soul around. We sat for twenty minutes in silence, listening to nothing but the stream and some bird we could not identify. It was the most peaceful I had felt in months.

Back in the car, still lost, we took another random turning and found ourselves climbing through what I later learned were the foothills of the Osterhorngruppe. The views opened up suddenly, Salzburg's lake district spreading below us in patches of blue and green. We stopped at a pull-in meant for tractors, I suspect, and stood there like fools grinning at each other. This was not in any guidebook I had read. This was not on any recommended driving route. This was just us, being rubbish at navigation, and Austria rewarding us for it.

By the time we actually found our farmhouse, the sun was dipping behind the mountains and we were two hours late. The owner, a wiry woman called Helga, did not seem surprised. "Everyone gets lost first time," she said, handing us keys and pointing toward a path behind the property. "Go up there tomorrow morning. No map. Just walk."

We did. Got lost again, naturally. Stumbled upon a meadow where someone had left an ancient wooden hay rake leaning against a fence post, the grass grown tall around it. Found a tiny shrine to St. Koloman himself tucked into a rock face, candles melted down to stubs, fresh flowers in a jar. No explanation, no context, just someone's quiet devotion left where strangers might or might not find it.

That became our pattern for the week. Deliberately vague plans, deliberate wrong turns, seeing what turned up. A bakery in a village so small it did not appear on our paper map, where the woman spoke no English and we managed with pointing and apologetic smiles, walking out with still-warm Apfelstrudel that ruined all other Apfelstrudel forever. A swimming spot in the Fuschlsee where locals had built rough diving platforms from driftwood, no lifeguard, no facilities, just clear cold water and the mountains watching.

I am not normally someone who relishes being lost. My natural state is to plan, to research, to know what is coming. Something about that broken sat-nav, that first ridiculous wrong turn into the cow field, shook something loose in me. I started to trust the accident, the unplanned, the path that petered out and forced you to choose another.

Our last morning, we tried to find that chapel with the crooked spire again, the one that started everything. Could not locate it. Drove around for half an hour, increasingly frantic, increasingly amused. Eventually gave up, stopped at a random farm shop for cheese and bread, drove to the airport still laughing about it.

Some places you find by accident, it turns out, are not meant to be found twice. You just have to be grateful you were lost enough to discover them once.