I have never been a natural navigator. Give me a map, a phone, and very clear instructions, and I will still find a way to end up somewhere I was not meant to be. So when my partner handed me the directions to our holiday home in Brzac, a tiny village on the island of Krk in Kvarner Bay, I should have known we were in for an adventure.

The drive from Rijeka airport had been straightforward enough. The bridge onto Krk is a proper feat of engineering, and I felt quite pleased with myself as we rolled onto the island. Then I missed the turning for Brzac. Not by a little. By a lot. We found ourselves on a narrow road climbing towards what I later learned was Vrbnik, clinging to cliffs above the Adriatic, with my partner giving me that look. You know the one. The "I love you but please never do this again" look.

Rather than turn back immediately, I kept going. Partly stubbornness, partly the road being too narrow to U-turn without causing an incident. We crested a hill and there it was: a tiny stone chapel with a rusted bell, surrounded by wild rosemary and sage. No sign, no tourists, just a local woman hanging laundry who waved at us like lost tourists were a daily amusement. We waved back, turned around in her driveway with much apologising through gestures, and headed down.

The actual turn for Brzac was unmarked and looked more like a farm track. I nearly missed it again. But then the road dipped into a tunnel of oak and olive trees, and suddenly we were in a different world. Brzac itself is barely a village. A handful of stone houses, some restored, some gently crumbling, and our place tucked among them with a terrace overlooking the bay. The owner had left the key under a flowerpot, which felt thrillingly illicit, and a bottle of local Zlahtina wine in the fridge, which felt like proper hospitality.

That first evening, determined to redeem myself, I suggested we explore on foot. We set off down what I insisted was a path to the sea. It was not. It was someone's vineyard. An elderly man appeared from between the rows, spoke rapid Croatian at us, then seeing our blank faces, simply pointed. We followed his finger through a gap in a dry stone wall and found ourselves in an olive grove that clearly nobody had pruned in decades. The trees were gnarled and ancient, silver-green in the late light, and at the bottom of the slope, completely hidden from any road, a tiny cove with water so clear you could count the pebbles.

We went back the next morning with swimming things and a picnic. There was no one else there. We had stumbled on our own private beach because I cannot read a map. My partner admitted, grudgingly, that my terrible sense of direction had its uses.

The rest of the week continued in this fashion. I would confidently lead us wrong, and we would find something better. A konoba in a village not on any tourist map, where the owner grilled fish he had caught that morning and refused to let us pay for the grappa. A walking trail that started behind a cemetery and wound through abandoned terraces where wild asparagus grew in profusion. We filled a bag and ate it with eggs for three days, feeling terribly local.

The lesson, which I have tried to apply since with mixed success, is that the best bits of a place are rarely where you are trying to go. Kvarner Bay is beautiful in the obvious ways: the proper beaches, the historic towns, the dramatic coastline. But I think about that chapel near Vrbnik more than I think about anywhere we actually planned to visit. I think about the olive grove and the old man who did not mind two lost Brits trampling his vines. I think about how my greatest weakness as a traveller turned out to be my only real strength.

We left Brzac with sand in our shoes, wine in our luggage, and a scrap of paper with rough directions to that cove, written by our landlord in exchange for a promise we would not tell too many people. I have kept that promise until now, more or less. Though I will say this: if you find yourself on Krk, miss a turning or two. See what happens. It worked for me, and I am professionally lost.