I have never been brilliant with directions, which is how I ended up driving the wrong way round a one-way system in Novalja twice before actually finding our holiday let. The first time, a very patient local man just shook his head and laughed. The second time, the same man was still there, still laughing. I waved apologetically and pretended I meant it.

We were staying at a place called Pag Novalja, a holiday home tucked away on the island of Pag in Kvarner Bay. The website had promised sea views and a quiet location, which sounded perfect after a frantic few months. What it did not fully prepare me for was just how easy it would be to miss entirely. The sat nav gave up about three kilometres out, leaving us to navigate by instinct and a rapidly dwindling phone battery. My partner kept suggesting we stop and ask someone. I, being a stubborn fool, insisted we were nearly there. We were not nearly there. Not even slightly.

By the time we finally spotted the right turning, down a narrow lane between two stone walls, I was ready to abandon the car and walk. But then we rounded the final bend and there it was, and honestly, the getting lost suddenly felt worth it. The house sat on a gentle slope looking out towards the Adriatic, with olive trees in the garden and a terrace that caught the afternoon sun perfectly. I stood there with my ridiculous oversized suitcase, sweating and triumphant, feeling like a conquering hero who had merely survived a twelve-minute drive.

The real magic, though, happened over the next few days when we stopped trying so hard to find things and simply wandered. On our first morning, I took a wrong turn on what I thought was the path to the nearest beach. Instead of sand, I found myself in a tiny hamlet where an old woman was selling cheese from her front door. This was Paski sir, the famous Pag cheese, and she had wheels of it sitting on wooden boards like some kind of dairy treasure. I bought a wedge using a combination of broken Croatian, pointing, and enthusiastic nodding. It was the best cheese I have ever tasted, and I only found it because I was fundamentally incompetent at following a simple coastal path.

That set the tone really. We started deliberately getting lost. We drove down roads that narrowed to barely a car's width, ending up at coves where the only other living creatures were goats giving us suspicious looks. One afternoon we followed a sign that said Plaža but the arrow seemed to point directly into someone's vineyard. We pressed on anyway, scrambling down a rocky track, and emerged onto a pebble beach no bigger than a tennis court. The water was absurdly clear, the kind of blue that makes you wonder if your eyes have been broken your whole life. We stayed until the light went golden and neither of us said much. Sometimes you do not need to.

My favourite accidental discovery came on our third day. I had popped out for bread and somehow took a left instead of a right, which led me up a steep track towards what looked like nothing at all. At the top, panting and slightly annoyed with myself, I found a ruined stone shepherd's hut and beyond it, a view across the whole of Novalja bay. The town sat below, white buildings clustered around the harbour, with the Velebit mountains hazy in the distance across the water. An old man was sitting on a rock nearby, whittling something. He nodded at me. I nodded back. We shared that view in comfortable silence, two people who had accidentally arrived somewhere excellent.

I think there is something particular about island geography that rewards the wandering. Pag is not large, but its landscape shifts constantly, from bare limestone to sudden green valleys, from tourist bustle to absolute stillness within a few minutes' drive. The coastline is deeply indented, full of hidden inlets and bays that do not appear on the obvious maps. Every time we thought we knew where we were going, the island gently corrected us.

By the end of the week, our approach had become almost superstitious. We would set out with a vague intention, take the road that looked least promising, and see what happened. This is not how I normally travel. I am usually the person with spreadsheets and restaurant reservations, the one who reads seventeen reviews before choosing where to have breakfast. Something about being on that island, in that house, with the sea always visible from the terrace, loosened something in me. Or perhaps I was just too tired from getting lost to plan properly anymore.

On our final evening, we tried to find that tiny pebble beach again, the one from the vineyard sign. We failed completely, ending up somewhere else entirely, another cove we had never seen before. The sun went down as we floated in water so still it felt like being held. My partner said something about coming back next year, finding the proper way to all these places. I said maybe we should not. Maybe the finding was the whole point.