I should have known the holiday was going to be interesting when the satnav decided Saint Martin Aux Buneaux was actually a small car park outside a tractor dealership. There we were, my partner and I, circling what was definitely not a charming Normandy gite, while a very patient man in overalls watched us with the expression of someone who had seen this exact scene play out at least twice that morning.

"We're looking for a holiday cottage," I said, rolling down the window with what I hoped looked like breezy confidence rather than desperate confusion.

He pointed vaguely toward the coast, muttered something about "toutes les Anglaises," and went back to his tyre pressure gauge. Fair enough, really.

The actual property, when we finally found it, sat down a lane so narrow I genuinely thought we'd taken a wrong turn into someone's driveway. The sort of lane where you find yourself holding your breath and praying you don't meet a determined French motorist coming the other way. The gite itself was a proper stone building, slightly crumbly in that appealing way, with a garden that looked like it had been arranged by someone who understood the value of a good ramble.

But here's the thing about arriving somewhere after a satnav mishap: you're already in the mindset of getting lost. And that, I've decided, is exactly the right mindset for this corner of Normandy.

We dumped our bags with the chaotic energy of people who had been in a car for far too long and immediately went wandering without any particular plan. The village of Saint Martin Aux Buneaux itself is tiny, the sort of place that doesn't so much have a centre as a gentle scattering of houses and the occasional surprised cat. We walked down a track that looked like it probably led somewhere interesting, or possibly nowhere at all, and found ourselves in a small valley with a stream running through it. No signposts, no other walkers, just the sound of water and some extremely vocal birds who seemed quite offended by our presence.

The next morning, determined to continue our accidental approach, we set off for what we thought was the coastal path. It wasn't. What we found instead was a tiny chapel, locked up and covered in that particular green moss that only seems to grow on very old stones in very quiet places. There was no information board, no opening times, no gift shop. Just a bench outside that looked like someone had placed it there specifically for the purpose of sitting quietly and contemplating whether you'd made a terrible mistake with your directions.

I sat on that bench for a good twenty minutes, watching my partner poke about trying to find a path to the actual sea, and had one of those moments of gentle self-reflection that holidays sometimes offer up when you're not looking for them. Here I was, slightly lost, slightly damp from a morning drizzle that hadn't been in the forecast, and genuinely happier than I'd been in months. There's something about accidental discovery that planned tourism simply cannot replicate. The chapel had probably stood there for centuries, completely indifferent to whether anyone visited, and that indifference felt like a gift.

We did eventually find the coast, though not where intended, scrambling down a path between gorse bushes to a pebble beach where we disturbed a heron and collected shells that are currently drying on our kitchen windowsill. The proper tourist beaches, with their facilities and their predictable charm, remained unknown to us throughout the stay.

By the end of the week, our routine had become almost deliberately directionless. Morning coffee, then out with no map, no phone signal to speak of, and the general intention of seeing what we might stumble across. A ruined wall that might have been part of something important once. A field of cows who followed us with the collective curiosity of a village committee. A small shop selling cider from the orchard out back, where the woman running it seemed genuinely surprised to see customers and had to dust off the bottles.

I think the satnav had it right, in its own malfunctioning way. Saint Martin Aux Buneaux isn't really a destination you arrive at cleanly. It's a place you find by mistake, and then keep finding, over and over, each time you step out without a plan.