I should have known the holiday was going to be interesting when I put the postcode into the sat nav and it directed me to a field of very unimpressed-looking cows. Three hours from Roscoff, two wrong turns, and one heated debate about whether I could actually speak French or just thought I could, and there we were: standing in front of a gate with a sign that definitely said something about cheese production.

Turns out my GCSE French had failed me at the crucial moment. The actual Le Vieux Bourg was another ten minutes down a lane so narrow I genuinely considered folding the wing mirrors in. When we finally found it, nestled in the Plounevez-Quintin countryside, I nearly cried with relief. Or possibly hunger. We'd missed lunch somewhere around Saint-Nicolas-du-Pelem, and my other half had that particular set to his jaw that meant either the galette-saucisse I'd promised him was happening soon, or there'd be words.

The stone farmhouse sat there like it had been waiting centuries for someone to finally arrive without navigational competence. Ivy creeping up one wall, a proper well in the garden, and silence so complete I could hear my own stomach rumbling. Madame Le Gall, who manages the property, appeared from somewhere with a smile that suggested she was entirely used to dishevelled English people arriving two hours late with excuses about bovine-related detours.

She showed us round with that particular Breton warmth - efficient but genuinely kind - pointing out the wood-burning stove, the beams that my six-foot husband would definitely brain himself on (he did, later that evening, with impressive commitment to the bit). The kitchen smelled faintly of the previous guests' crepes, which I took as both a challenge and a promise.

But here's where it gets properly good. We decided, in that way you do when you're slightly giddy with arrival and too much travel coffee, to go for a wander before unpacking. Just a quick stroll, we said. Get our bearings. There's a footpath marked on the map Madame Le Gall had left us.

We found the footpath. We lost the footpath. We found what I can only describe as the most perfect hidden chapel I've ever stumbled across, half-swallowed by brambles, with a stone cross leaning like it was mid-conversation with the sky. No sign, no information board, no coach parking. Just us, the late afternoon light, and the faint sound of someone nearby harvesting something with a machine that hadn't been invented when that chapel was built.

Getting properly lost in Brittany is different from getting lost anywhere else. The hedgerows are so high you can't see over them, so every corner reveals something. We found a stream where someone had left a perfectly good wheelbarrow in the water, presumably for reasons that made sense to them. We found a field of artichokes, which I initially thought were some kind of alien invasion. We found a lane that ended in a farmyard where a dog barked once, decided we weren't worth the effort, and went back to sleep.

By the time we stumbled back to Le Vieux Bourg, the sun was setting and my phone had died somewhere around the artichokes. We were muddy, slightly scratched from an ill-advised shortcut through gorse, and absolutely starving. My husband had hit his head again on the same beam within thirty seconds of walking through the door.

I stood there in that farmhouse kitchen, trying to work out if we had enough eggs for an omelette, listening to him swear softly in the way he does when he's actually happy, and I thought: this is it, isn't it? The whole point. Not the carefully planned trips to the big sights, the tick-list tourism. The getting lost. The finding things you weren't looking for. The chapel no guidebook mentions, the wheelbarrow in the stream, the artichokes.

We spent the rest of that week deliberately getting lost. Took wrong turns on purpose. Followed lanes that got narrower and narrower until they turned into tracks, then paths, then someone's driveway with a furious goose. Found a beach that wasn't on any map we had, just rocks and sand and the kind of Atlantic light that makes you understand why painters come here and never leave.

Every evening we'd return to Le Vieux Bourg with some new discovery. A bakery in a village so small I can't remember its name, where the croissants were still warm and the woman behind the counter pretended not to notice my terrible French. A standing stone in a field of cauliflower, just standing there like it was waiting for someone to finally ask what it was thinking about all these centuries.

The mishaps continued, obviously. I attempted to buy what I thought was local cider and ended up with something that stripped paint. We got chased by that goose again, or possibly its cousin. My husband's head never really recovered from those beams.

But sitting by that wood-burning stove on our last night, maps spread across the table covered in my scribbled notes and question marks, I realised something. I'd arrived thinking I needed a plan, an itinerary, a proper handle on where I was going. I'd spent the whole week gloriously, deliberately, wonderfully lost instead.

The sat nav still thinks that farmhouse is in a cheese field. I hope it never gets updated.