I have never been brilliant at reading maps, and my first visit to Krk Brzac in Kvarner Bay proved this beyond all doubt. We had flown into Rijeka, picked up our hire car, and set off with what I can only describe as misplaced confidence. The sat nav gave up somewhere near Omišalj, which I now realise was probably a warning I chose to ignore. My partner, ever the optimist, suggested we follow the coastal road and enjoy the scenery. Three wrong turns later, we found ourselves on a narrow track between olive groves, the car making unhappy noises about the width of the path. I was convinced we would need to reverse half a mile. Then, quite by accident, we crested a small hill and there it was: our stone villa, looking far more picturesque than any photograph had suggested, with the sea glinting beyond and a fig tree heavy with fruit practically leaning against the front wall.

The mishap that truly defined our arrival came minutes later. I had spotted what I assumed was the private parking area, a flat gravel patch beside the house. I swung the car in with something approaching triumph, only to discover it was in fact the neighbour's terrace. An elderly gentleman appeared from behind a lemon tree, looking less annoyed than genuinely baffled by my interpretation of Croatian parking etiquette. My partner, who had been dozing, woke to find me performing an elaborate three-point turn while offering apologetic hand gestures that probably resembled a distressed traffic conductor. The neighbour, bless him, ended up guiding me backwards with patient hand signals, then produced two glasses of homemade rakija from nowhere. We toasted my terrible navigation, and I decided then that getting lost might be the best thing I had done in years.

The villa itself rewarded our accidental approach. Those stone walls, thick and cool, had clearly witnessed decades of arrivals far more competent than ours. The terrace, the actual one this time, overlooked a slice of Kvarner Bay that guidebooks seem to have forgotten. We spent that first evening not unpacking properly but simply sitting with wine we had bought at a supermarket we never found again, watching fishing boats drift past and wondering how we had stumbled into somewhere so quietly spectacular.

The next morning, still refusing to trust technology, we set out on foot with no particular destination. A path behind the villa led through scrubby maquis and down towards the water, though "path" suggests more organisation than actually existed. We scrambled past wild rosemary and low pines, emerging at a tiny cove where a single fisherman sat with lines in the water. He nodded without surprise, as if lost English tourists appeared regularly. The water was absurdly clear, the kind of clarity that makes you self-conscious about swimming technique. We stayed for hours, sharing bread and cheese we had grabbed from the villa, feeling rather pleased with our complete lack of planning.

That set the pattern for the week. We found a family-run konoba by following the smell of grilled fish down an unmarked lane. We discovered a swimming spot where locals gathered at sunset, accessed by what I can only describe as a goat track with aspirations. Each discovery came through wrong turns, dead ends, and my stubborn refusal to download an offline map. My partner developed a habit of raising an eyebrow whenever I suggested "just seeing where this goes," but she never once suggested we do otherwise.

By the final evening, sitting on that same terrace with the neighbour's rakija, now something of a tradition, I understood that my spectacular inability to navigate had become the point. The Kvarner Bay I experienced was not the one in brochures but something smaller and more particular: hidden coves, unexpected conversations, meals that happened because you took the turning that looked less promising. I still cannot read a map properly. I am rather hoping I never learn.