I'll write this article about staying at a Hirschalm in Upper Austria, focusing on arrival, first impressions, and discovering hidden gems by getting lost. Let me craft this in a casual British English style with natural humour and self-reflection.

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The sat-nav gave up somewhere near Gmunden, which should have been my first clue that this holiday was going to go off-script. "Recalculating," it said, before suggesting I perform a U-turn on a single-track mountain road with a sheer drop on one side and a very judgmental-looking cow on the other. I chose to trust the cow, and that decision set the tone for the entire week.

I was bound for the Hirschalm, one of those traditional Austrian alpine properties you see in brochures and assume cannot possibly exist in real life. My partner had done the booking, enthusing about "authentic rural character" and "unspoilt surroundings." I had nodded along, secretly more interested in whether the Wi-Fi would cope with streaming football. Spoiler: it would not, and I am profoundly grateful.

The final approach was where the real comedy began. A signpost pointed left for "Hirschalm" and right for "Hirschalm" with identical lettering. I went left, following a track that grew progressively more agricultural until I found myself in what I can only describe as someone's private barnyard. A farmer emerged from a shed, regarded my hire car with the weary patience of a man who had seen this exact scene play out a hundred times before, and silently pointed back the way I'd come. No words exchanged. None needed. I had become that tourist.

The correct turning, naturally, was the one that looked like a footpath. The Hirschalm sat at the end of it, a proper working farmhouse with holiday apartments, all dark timber and flower boxes overflowing with geraniums that looked almost aggressively well-tended. My landlady, Frau Huber, appeared on the balcony and waved with the enthusiasm of someone who had spotted my earlier wrong turn and was enjoying the show.

The apartment itself was exactly what you want from this sort of place: wooden beams you would definitely crack your head on, a kitchen that smelled faintly of decades of good cooking, and a view that made me forget my phone existed for whole minutes at a time. I unpacked badly, then decided to "explore the local area" before dinner. This is where the proper getting lost began.

I had intended a gentle stroll. Perhaps to a nearby village. Maybe a bit of lake-gazing at Traunsee, visible in the distance. Instead, I followed a path that looked well-trodden, then less so, then frankly speculative. The markers changed from official walking signs to painted blazes on trees to, eventually, nothing at all. I found myself in a clearing with a small chapel I later learned was the Hubertuskapelle, apparently known only to locals and the pathologically directionless. It was locked, but the porch sheltered a bench, and I sat there for twenty minutes listening to nothing but wind and distant cowbells, feeling simultaneously foolish and rather pleased with myself.

The descent was worse. I took what I believed to be a shortcut and emerged, to my genuine astonishment, at a small dairy farm where an elderly woman was making cheese in an outdoor copper vat. She did not seem surprised to see me. She simply handed me a sample on a wooden paddle and carried on stirring. It was the best cheese I have ever tasted, and I have no photograph of it because my phone had died somewhere around the second wrong turn. I bought a wedge for embarrassingly few euros and found my way back to the Hirschalm by following the smell of woodsmoke.

That evening, Frau Huber produced a simple dinner of bread, cold meats, and soup, and I ate it on the balcony watching the light fade over the mountains. I told her about my day. She laughed, properly laughed, and said this happened to everyone who stayed more than a week. The ones who only came for three days, she said, they stayed on the proper paths and went home with photographs of the lake. The ones who got properly lost found the chapel, or the cheese woman, or the hidden waterfall I had apparently walked straight past.

I spent the rest of the week deliberately getting lost. Each morning I would set out with a rough direction and no map, and each afternoon I would return with some accidental discovery: a swimming hole in the Traun river where teenagers jumped from rocks, a Gasthaus that served only one dish but did it magnificently, a meadow full of wild orchids that no guidebook had mentioned. The Hirschalm became my base of operations, my reliable return point, the place where I would sit with my accidental cheese and reflect on how thoroughly I had misunderstood what this holiday would be.

On my final morning, I packed the car with considerably more skill than I had unpacked, and Frau Huber presented me with a jar of her own jam and directions that she had written out by hand. "For next time," she said, though we both knew the directions would only make sense to someone who had already got lost there at least once. I drove away slowly, taking the correct turning this time, and within five minutes I was lost again, following a road that seemed to lead nowhere in particular until it suddenly deposited me at a viewpoint I would never have found on purpose.

I stopped the car and looked back at where I had been. The Hirschalm was invisible, hidden in its valley, but I knew exactly where it sat. That is the peculiar magic of getting lost properly: you end up knowing a place more intimately than any sat-nav ever could. I drove on, already plotting my return, already planning which wrong turn to take first.