I have never been a natural navigator, and my recent trip to Angerville L'Orcher in Normandy proved this beyond all reasonable doubt. What should have been a straightforward four-hour drive from Caen spiralled into something far more ridiculous the moment I decided I knew better than the sat nav.

The trouble began with a rogue roundabout near Cricqueville-en-Auge. I took what I felt was a scenic option, which is posh traveller speak for wrong turn. Within twenty minutes I was down a lane barely wide enough for a determined bicycle, hedgerows pressing against the windows like nosy neighbours. A farmer in a blue overalls watched me crawl past with the patient expression of someone who has seen this exact disaster many times before. I waved cheerily, as if this were precisely my intended route.

The true comedy arrived when I attempted to turn around. The driveway I chose belonged to a cider producer, whose enormous dog announced my arrival with theatrical displeasure. The owner emerged, wiping her hands on her apron, and rather than shooing me off she insisted I sample something from her barrels. I stood there, still gripping my steering wheel through the open window, drinking the most extraordinary dry cider I have ever tasted and explaining in broken French that I was not actually here for cider, merely incompetence. She found this hilarious. I left with four bottles and absolutely no clearer idea where I was heading.

Eventually I stumbled upon Angerville L'Orcher from entirely the wrong direction, which meant the first sight of it was from behind, across a field of grazing cattle. The stone farmhouse sat there like a patient secret, half-covered in ivy that looked almost deliberate in its disorder. My little rental car crunched up the gravel drive and I felt that particular relief of travellers who have survived their own foolishness.

The owners, a couple from Rouen who spend weekends here, had left the key in a rusted milk churn by the back door with a handwritten note in charming English. Welcome, it said, the village shop closes at half twelve, the church bells work, and please do not feed the neighbour's cat though he will pretend otherwise. I laughed properly for the first time since Caen.

That first evening I did not venture far. I walked the immediate lanes without purpose, still slightly giddy from my earlier disorientation. The light in Normandy does something particular in late afternoon, a soft golden quality that makes even ordinary hedgerows look considered and artistic. I found a bench commemorating someone called Marcel, apparently a local resistance figure, positioned with perfect randomness where two paths crossed for no obvious reason. I sat there until the mosquitoes found me, thinking about how rarely I allow myself to be lost, how tightly I cling to efficiency and arrival times.

The house itself revealed its character slowly. The floorboards creaked in specific spots, almost musically. The kitchen window framed a view of apple trees that must have been planted decades ago, their branches heavy and unpruned in that beautiful French way. I made a terrible omelette with local eggs and butter, standing at the counter in the gathering dusk, and it tasted of absolute triumph.

Later, exploring by torchlight because I had forgotten where the outdoor light switch hid, I discovered the well. It sat capped with iron in a corner of the garden I would never have found without my earlier commitment to confusion. Moss grew thick around its base, and peering down I saw nothing but blackness and heard the faint, ancient sound of water far below. I stood there for longer than sensible, feeling the particular humility that old places inspire.

The neighbour's cat did appear, naturally, pretending starvation with professional skill. I thought of the note and compromised with a saucer of milk I would deny later. We sat together on the step, two frauds in the darkness, listening to an owl somewhere in those unkempt apple trees.

That first night I slept better than I had in months. The bed was slightly too soft, the pillows unfamiliar, and somewhere distant a tractor started at an unreasonable hour. None of it mattered. I had arrived by accident in almost every sense, and found something I could not have planned.