I have always believed that the best holidays begin with a small disaster, and our trip to Tossens in Lower Saxony proved me right in spectacular fashion. We had been driving for hours from the ferry port, my partner navigating with the confidence of someone who had briefly glanced at a map three days prior, when I spotted what I thought was a shortcut through some farmland. It was not a shortcut. It was a tractor path that ended in a drainage ditch, and there we sat, surrounded by flat green fields that stretched to every horizon, while a very patient horse observed our stupidity from behind a fence. I laughed until my ribs hurt, mostly to avoid crying.

By the time we reached our holiday home in Tossens, the light was fading and my dignity was still somewhere in that ditch. But the moment we stepped inside, something shifted. The place smelled of pine and salt air, that particular North Sea combination that makes you instantly forget whatever nonsense preceded your arrival. We dumped our bags, opened the windows, and stood there in silence, listening to nothing but wind and distant gulls. It was perfect, and I did not deserve it after my navigational crimes.

The next morning, determined to redeem myself, I suggested we explore without a map. My partner raised an eyebrow but humoured me. We walked north along the dyke, that extraordinary feat of engineering that keeps the Wadden Sea at bay, and within twenty minutes we were gloriously lost. The path forked, then forked again, and soon we were wandering through marshland where the grass grew in tufts like a badly shaven beard. We stumbled upon a tiny wooden shelter, clearly built by someone local for watching birds, and sat there for an hour with thermos coffee, watching oystercatchers strut about like they owned the place. No signpost had led us there. No guidebook mentioned it. It was ours alone, discovered through pure incompetence.

That set the pattern for the week. We became accidental explorers, specialists in wrong turns. One afternoon, cycling what we thought was the coastal route, we ended up in a village so small it barely registered on my mental geography of the region. The place had one shop, one church with a crooked spire, and a bakery where an elderly woman sold us still-warm Franzbrotchen despite our terrible German. We ate them on a bench outside, watching an ancient man repair fishing nets with movements so practised they looked like meditation. I found myself thinking about how rarely I allow myself to be lost, how my ordinary life demands constant efficiency, constant knowing. Here, being lost was the whole point.

Another day, seeking the beach, we took a path through dunes that grew progressively wilder until the sand gave way to mudflats. The tide was out, exposing that extraordinary Wadden Sea landscape of channels and pools, and we walked carefully, following the odd marker pole, until we found ourselves in a hollow between dunes where someone had built a fire pit from driftwood. Ash suggested recent use. We never saw who used it, but we returned each evening, building our own modest fires, watching the sky turn that particular North Sea grey that is somehow more beautiful than any sunset I have seen in more celebrated places.

I think now about what I would have missed with proper planning. The signed paths, the recommended routes, the sensible choices. I would have missed the heron that stood motionless in a drainage channel while we held our breath. The small museum in someone's front room, dedicated to local shipwrecks, that we found only because we knocked on the wrong door seeking directions. The conversation with a retired fisherman who explained, in broken English and elaborate hand gestures, how to spot when the tide turns dangerous.

Tossens itself is not a grand destination, and that is precisely its charm. It is a working place, a lived-in corner of the German coast where people get on with ordinary lives while visitors pass through. Our holiday home became a sanctuary between these accidental discoveries, a place to dry wet boots and plan tomorrow's deliberate wrong turns. I never did learn to navigate properly. On our final day, we got lost trying to find the road back to the ferry, ending up in a field of sheep who seemed unsurprised by our appearance. I laughed again, easier now, no longer worried about the indignity.

Some places teach you that getting lost is not failure but invitation. Lower Saxony's coast, flat and unassuming, reveals itself only to those willing to wander without purpose. I arrived thinking I needed a holiday from work. I left realising I needed a holiday from knowing exactly where I was going.