I suppose every decent holiday needs a slightly rubbish start, and ours began with me confidently typing "Olpenitz" into the sat nav while my other half, Sarah, raised one of those eyebrows that says she has doubts but cannot be bothered arguing. Three hours of Autobahn later, we found ourselves in a supermarket car park in Kappeln, surrounded by confused pensioners and a man trying to parallel park a caravan the size of a bungalow. Turns out I had somehow selected "Olpenitz" as the destination but neglected to add "Ostseeresort," so the sat nav had simply given up and deposited us at the nearest vaguely similar-sounding place. Sarah was remarkably gracious about this, which only made me feel worse.

We eventually found our way to the actual Ostseeresort Olpenitz, tucked along the Schlei fjord in Schleswig-Holstein, and I immediately understood why people bother making the trek. The place has that particular north German charm, all flat horizons and enormous skies, the kind of landscape that makes you feel simultaneously insignificant and oddly peaceful about it. Our apartment was one of those modern timber-clad numbers with a balcony overlooking the water, and I spent a good ten minutes just standing there with a cup of tea that I had made badly because German kettles always seem to require a degree in engineering.

The real magic, though, happened because of my spectacular inability to read a map properly. On our second morning, I suggested a walk to what I believed was a nearby beach. We set off along a coastal path, me striding ahead with misplaced confidence, Sarah following with the resigned expression of someone who has been here before. Within twenty minutes the proper path had dissolved into something that could generously be described as "a gap between some reeds." Rather than admit defeat, I pressed on, and we found ourselves in a small cove that I am fairly certain does not appear on any tourist literature.

It was extraordinary. Just a tiny shingle beach, a few weathered wooden posts from some forgotten landing stage, and complete silence except for the water lapping and what I later learned were curlews calling from the marshland behind us. We sat on a driftwood log for the better part of an hour, watching a heron stand motionless in the shallows like it was waiting for something important that never arrived. Sarah produced emergency biscuits from her coat pocket, because she is the sort of person who plans for disaster, and we agreed that my terrible navigation had finally paid dividends.

Emboldened by this accidental success, we spent the rest of the week deliberately getting lost. We wandered down unmarked tracks near the resort and found a tiny smokehouse in someone's garden, selling fish they had caught that morning from the Schlei. The owner, a woman called Ute who spoke excellent English and was far too polite to comment on my pronunciation of "Moin," let us try smoked eel that was simultaneously the most and least fishy thing I have ever eaten. We discovered a church in a village I still cannot name, its churchyard overgrown and peaceful, with gravestones dating back centuries and a view across flat fields to the distant water.

One evening, attempting to find a recommended restaurant in Arnis, we took a wrong turning and ended up on a narrow lane between hedgerows that seemed increasingly unsuitable for our hire car. Just as Sarah was suggesting I reverse, the hedgerow opened onto a small clearing with a bench overlooking the Schlei at sunset. The water had turned that particular silvery-pink that only happens in northern latitudes, and a family of swans was making its dignified way along the far bank. We sat there until the mosquitoes found us, which in Schleswig-Holstein does not take long, and I felt one of those rare moments of proper contentment that seem to require absolutely nothing from you in return.

I have been on holidays where every hour was scheduled and every attraction ticked off, and I cannot honestly say they were worse, but they were certainly different. There is something about the flat, unshowy landscape of Schleswig-Holstein that rewards the aimless, the slightly lost, the people who do not mind a bit of shingle in their shoes. By the end of the week I had almost stopped apologising to Sarah for my navigation, though I did buy her an enormous piece of marzipan from a bakery in Kappeln by way of insurance for future mishaps.

On our final morning I tried to find that first cove again, properly this time, with maps and everything, and I could not locate it. Sarah found this hilarious, and I suppose I did too, eventually. Some places, it seems, only exist by accident, and perhaps that is exactly as it should be.