I have never been particularly gifted with directions, which is how I ended up driving down what I am fairly certain was someone's private olive grove at half past two in the afternoon, convinced it was the road to our holiday let. The sat nav had given up on me somewhere near Malinska, and my partner was doing that very British thing of staring silently out the window while pretending everything was absolutely fine. We were looking for a place called Krk Klimno, somewhere on the eastern side of Krk island, and I had somehow translated "coastal road" as "agricultural shortcut."

The olive trees eventually led us to a stone wall, which led us to a very patient Croatian gentleman who, through a combination of pointing and interpretive dance, set us back on track. We found the property twenty minutes later, tucked into a quiet corner of Klimno Bay, and I will be honest: the relief of seeing the actual building nearly brought me to tears.

The apartment itself was simple and spotless, with a balcony that looked directly onto the water. I stood there with a cup of tea that I had made with slightly too much milk, because I am English and this is how we process emotion, and watched a man in a small boat checking his fishing nets. The bay was almost perfectly still. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked. I felt the particular shame of someone who has made a complete hash of the journey but has arrived somewhere genuinely lovely nonetheless.

That evening, we walked down to the seafront without any particular plan. Klimno is not a place that announces itself. There are no grand promenades or organised tour groups. We found a tiny konoba, really just a few plastic tables outside someone's house, where an elderly woman was serving wine she told us her husband made in their garage. It was sharp and slightly fizzy and absolutely nothing like the Pinot Grigio I usually buy from Tesco. We drank it with bread and prsut that she had hung to dry herself, and I felt the first proper unwinding of the trip.

The next morning, determined to redeem myself after the olive grove incident, I suggested we explore without the sat nav. This was, in retrospect, a questionable decision given my established track record. We headed south on foot, following a path that started behind the apartment block and seemed to lead nowhere in particular. The path became narrower, then steeper, then essentially disappeared into scrubby maquis vegetation. My partner gave me a look. I gave a confident smile that I absolutely did not feel.

Then the vegetation opened up, and we found ourselves looking down at a cove so small it did not appear on any map I later checked. There was no beach to speak of, just flat rocks shelving into water so clear you could see every pebble on the bottom. A single fishing boat was moored there, and a man was swimming laps with the slow, methodical pace of someone who had been doing this every morning for forty years. We sat on the rocks and watched him, and nobody asked us to leave, and nobody else arrived.

We went back to that cove twice more during the week, never seeing another person. On the second visit, we brought the garage wine and some tomatoes from a roadside stall. On the third, I swam those same slow laps, feeling the particular privilege of having found something by getting properly lost.

The rest of Krk island has its charms, I am sure. We did drive to Vrbnik one afternoon for the famous pasta, and it was excellent, and I managed not to destroy any agricultural property in the process. But it is that accidental cove I keep thinking about, and the patient olive grove gentleman, and the way a holiday can redeem itself through your own incompetence if you are willing to follow the wrong path far enough.