I have to admit, my first attempt at finding our holiday home in Medulin-Pomer did not go exactly to plan. We'd flown into Pula, picked up the hire car, and I was feeling rather smug about how smoothly everything had gone. That smugness lasted precisely until I turned down what I thought was the right lane and found myself face to face with a very confused-looking goat in someone's front garden. Turns out, sat navs and Istrian country lanes have something of a complicated relationship.

The goat and I shared a moment of mutual bewilderment before I executed what can only be described as an eleven-point turn and retreated with what little dignity remained. My partner sat in the passenger seat making no effort whatsoever to hide her amusement. "Hidden gems," she said, with infuriating cheerfulness. "You wanted to find hidden gems."

She wasn't wrong, as it happens. That wrong turn led us down a track I'd never have chosen deliberately, past crumbling stone walls draped in wild grapevines, and into a tiny clearing where an elderly chap was selling honey from a folding table. No sign, no fanfare, just a handwritten price tag and a jar of something he called "forest honey" that tasted like nothing I'd ever had before. We bought two jars and he threw in a sprig of dried lavender for good measure, waving us off as if wrong-turning tourists were his primary customer base.

By the time we actually found the property in Pomer, I'd become rather attached to my new role as accidental explorer. The place itself was lovely - a proper stone house with a terrace that looked out towards the water - but I found myself itching to get deliberately lost again. The next morning, I persuaded my somewhat sceptical partner that we should abandon any pretence of a plan and simply wander.

We set off towards what we thought was the coast path and somehow ended up in a pine forest instead. The smell was extraordinary, that hot resin scent that makes you feel slightly drunk just breathing it. We followed a narrow track that grew progressively less track-like until it petered out entirely at a small cove we'd never have found otherwise. No beach bar, no sun loungers, just smooth grey stones and water so clear you could watch fish darting between the rocks. We spent the whole morning there, sharing a picnic of bread and that forest honey, feeling rather pleased with ourselves for being such intrepid accidental adventurers.

The following day, we got lost in what I can only describe as the most pleasant way possible. We'd intended to walk to the nearby marina for lunch and took a left where we should have taken a slight-left, which in Istrian path terms is the difference between civilisation and finding yourself in an olive grove talking to a woman who spoke no English but communicated entirely through gestures that we should absolutely try her homemade rakija. We did. It was potent. She also gave us directions that involved pointing at the sun, making a sound like a motorboat, and walking in a small circle for emphasis. Miraculously, we emerged twenty minutes later at a tiny konoba that wasn't on any map I'd seen, where we ate the freshest squid imaginable and drank local Malvazija until we felt entirely justified in getting lost on the walk back.

I think what struck me most was how different this felt from holidays where every hour is accounted for. There's something rather humbling about realising you've been relying too heavily on plans, on reviews, on the supposed certainty of knowing exactly where you're going. Istria, or at least the bit around Pomer and Medulin, doesn't particularly reward that approach. It's full of these accidental corners - the honey seller, the stone cove, the rakija-bearing olive farmer - that simply don't exist for people who stay on the proper paths.

On our final evening, we got lost one last time. We'd meant to walk to a known viewpoint and instead found ourselves on a dirt track between two fields of something purple and flowering. The sun was going down, painting everything that particular Croatian gold that makes you understand why people paint landscapes in the first place. We stood there, slightly mosquito-bitten, slightly rakija-hazy, entirely uncertain of our precise location, and watched the light change over a view we never would have chosen deliberately.

My partner turned to me and said, "You know, that goat was probably trying to tell you something."

She was right, of course. Sometimes the wrong turn is exactly the right one.