I should have known the holiday was going to be eventful when I managed to get my hire car stuck in a Zadar supermarket car park within forty minutes of landing. There I was, sweating profusely, wedged between a concrete bollard and a very patient Croatian man's Fiat, wondering how on earth parallel parking in Croydon had prepared me for this. A lovely local chap eventually guided me out with hand signals that looked suspiciously like he was conducting an orchestra, and I trundled off towards Novigrad with my dignity in tatters and the air conditioning blasting directly into my face.

The property sat perched above a quiet stretch of coastline, the sort of place where you half expect to find a fisherman mending nets and muttering about the weather. My first evening was meant to be simple: pop to the local shop, grab some bits for supper, perhaps a civilised glass of wine on the terrace. Instead I took a wrong turn somewhere near the water's edge and found myself on a dirt track that grew progressively narrower, more overgrown, and apparently less connected to anything resembling civilisation. The sat nav had given up ages ago, displaying nothing but grey void and a small icon suggesting I drive into the sea.

This accidental detour, however, turned out to be the making of the whole trip. The track wound down through scrubby pines and emerged at a tiny cove I'd never have found deliberately, a pebbled scoop of beach with water so clear I could see fish darting between the stones. An elderly woman sat on a folding chair at one end, occasionally pulling octopus from a bucket and beating it against a rock with the rhythmic dedication of someone who'd been doing this for decades. She nodded at me. I nodded back. Neither of us spoke, and it was perfect.

Getting properly lost became my daily ritual. I'd set out with vague intentions, a bottle of water and absolutely no sense of direction, then simply see what turned up. One morning I wandered into a hamlet where three men sat outside a garage that seemed to sell nothing but tyres, Coca-Cola and local wine. They insisted I try the latter, which was served in a plastic cup and tasted of sunshine and something slightly metallic. We communicated in a mixture of broken English, enthusiastic gestures, and me repeatedly saying "hvala" with the misplaced confidence of someone who'd practised it once in the airport.

Another wrong turning led me to an overgrown cemetery above the water, its stone crosses weathered smooth by salt and decades of wind. A cat slept on someone's great-grandmother's final resting place. Butterflies moved through the wild lavender that had colonised the boundaries. I sat on a broken wall for an hour, watching a container ship crawl across the horizon and wondering why I ever thought holidays needed to be so thoroughly planned.

The property itself became my base for these expeditions, a place to return with dusty feet and stories that wouldn't translate properly. I'd cook simple meals from whatever I'd stumbled across, eat them on the terrace as the light went golden over the water, and feel genuinely pleased with myself for having no particular idea what tomorrow might bring.

On my final morning I got lost one last time, quite deliberately, following a path that seemed to lead nowhere until it delivered me to a small chapel with a red-tiled roof and a door that opened with a creak. Inside smelled of candle wax and old stone. Someone had left fresh flowers. I sat for a while in the cool darkness, thinking about how I'd arrived flustered and ridiculous, and was leaving with something I hadn't expected to find: the particular peace that comes from surrendering to uncertainty, from trusting that wrong turns often lead exactly where you need to go.

I still can't parallel park properly, mind. Some things don't change.