I have never been so relieved to see a stone wall in my life. Three hours of driving from Marseille airport, my partner navigating with the confidence of someone who had definitely not forgotten their reading glasses, and we finally crunched onto the gravel drive of what I prayed was our paradou in Provence. It was not our paradou. It was a very nice farmhouse belonging to a Monsieur Lefranc, who appeared at his window with the weary expression of a man who had redirected lost Britons before.

The actual paradou, when we found it ten minutes later, sat down a narrow lane that our hire car treated with deep suspicion. A paradou, I now know, is a traditional Provencal stone house, typically modest and square with a tiled roof that looks like it has weathered every mistral since Napoleon. This one had a small swimming pool glinting behind a hedge of lavender, already fading to grey in late August, and a terrace where a single lizard performed morning yoga on the warm stones.

Our mishap with Monsieur Lefranc set the tone for the week. We became determined wanderers, deliberately losing ourselves in the lanes around Paradou village and the Alpilles hills beyond. The first morning we set out for what the map suggested was a simple loop to Maussane-les-Alpilles. We missed the turning, found ourselves on a farm track between rows of silvery olive trees, and emerged blinking at a tiny stone chapel called Saint-Sixte that no guidebook had mentioned. A local woman was leaving flowers. She nodded at us as if English couples materialising from olive groves were entirely routine.

That accidental discovery became our method. We abandoned the car entirely for days, walking the dusty sentiers through garrigue scrubland, thyme and rosemary releasing their scent underfoot. Getting properly lost in Provence requires commitment. The paths fork unexpectedly, signed with paint marks that seem to change colour out of mischief. We followed red stripes until they became yellow, found ourselves at a dry stone borie that looked centuries old, and ate our picnic of saucisson and terrible supermarket bread in its shade.

The bread improved once we accidentally found a proper boulangerie in Fontvieille, another village we had not planned to visit. The baker, spotting our dishevelled state, asked if we had walked from Paradou. When I admitted we had got lost trying to reach Les Baux-de-Provence, which was apparently three miles in the opposite direction, he laughed so hard he had to lean on his counter. He gave us an extra tarte tatin, which we ate on a bench near Alphonse Daudet's windmill, feeling absurdly pleased with ourselves.

My favourite accidental discovery came on our fourth day. We had set out early, map confidently folded away, and followed a path that climbed through pine woods. The red paint marks deserted us completely. We pressed on through scratchy undergrowth, mildly bickering, until the trees opened onto a plateau of bare rock. Below lay a valley we did not recognise, a farmhouse with blue shutters, and the sound of someone practising trumpet scales with more enthusiasm than skill. We sat for an hour. No one else appeared. The trumpeter never improved, but the light on the limestone cliffs shifted from white to gold, and I felt something unknot in my chest that I had not realised was tight.

I had arrived in Provence with a list. Roman ruins, provencal markets, the proper restaurants with their Michelin aspirations. I achieved almost none of it. Instead I found stone huts and patient lizards and a baker who laughed at me. The paradou itself became our anchor, its small pool essential after hot walks, its kitchen where we attempted daube de boeuf with wine from a cooperative we stumbled across near Eygalieres. The wine was rough. The stew was edible. We ate it on the terrace watching bats emerge at dusk.

On our final morning, walking purposefully without map or phone, we found ourselves back at Monsieur Lefranc's wall. He was in his garden. He recognised us immediately, raised his hand in greeting, and did not look surprised at all.