I should have known the holiday was going to be interesting when my sat nav tried to send me into an olive grove. There I was, crawling along a dirt track in my hire car, convinced I was taking the scenic route to Nova Siri in Basilicata, only to find myself face to face with a very unimpressed goat and a farmer who waved his arms with the kind of enthusiasm that needed no translation. Turns out "scenic" and "wrong" are basically the same word in my personal Italian dictionary.

After what felt like a minor expedition, I finally found the actual road and rolled up to the property with a boot full of luggage and a passenger seat scattered with crisps from an emergency motorway stop near Potenza. The place sat quietly among low hills, nothing flashy, just white walls and terracotta tiles doing that effortless Mediterranean thing. I stepped out of the car and immediately felt the kind of heat that makes British people question every life choice that brought them to a country where air conditioning is considered a charming suggestion rather than a necessity.

The first evening, determined to explore, I set off on foot with no particular plan beyond finding dinner. This is where I should mention that my sense of direction has been described by friends as "creatively alternative." Within twenty minutes I was thoroughly lost among narrow lanes that seemed to fold back on themselves like a particularly confusing pasta shape. The houses here were old stone, some abandoned, some clearly lived in by families who had probably watched generations of tourists wander past with that same bewildered expression.

But here is the thing about getting properly lost in Basilicata: you find things. I stumbled into a tiny piazza where three elderly men sat on a bench discussing something with the intensity of football commentators. They looked up, nodded, and one pointed me toward what he described with elaborate hand gestures as somewhere that made "the good bread." I followed his directions, such as they were, and found a bakery that had no sign, no opening hours, just a door propped open and the smell of something extraordinary happening inside.

The woman running it spoke no English and my Italian extends to ordering coffee and apologising profusely. We managed through pointing and smiling, and I left with a loaf of pane di Matera, dark and chewy and still warm, plus some local olives she practically forced on me after I made what I can only assume were embarrassing noises of appreciation while eating the sample.

Walking back, still not entirely sure of my route, I took another wrong turn and found myself on a ridge looking down toward the Ionian Sea, visible as a thin silver line between hills covered in scrub and the occasional stand of pine. The light was doing that golden hour thing that photographers get irritatingly excited about. I sat on a rock, tore off pieces of bread, and felt the particular satisfaction of having absolutely no idea where I was and not minding in the slightest.

The next morning I tried to find that bakery again and failed completely, which I have decided to treat as a gift rather than a frustration. Some places, I am learning, are meant to be discovered by accident and remembered imperfectly, like dreams you cannot quite hold onto. I did find a different bakery, and a bar where the coffee cost less than a pound and came with a free lecture from the owner about how I was drinking it too quickly.

By day three I had stopped trying to plan anything. I drove without much purpose, took roads that looked interesting, and regularly found myself in villages where the main activity appeared to be watching the stranger from Britain reverse awkwardly in a narrow street. In one such place, I discovered a small museum dedicated to local farming tools, housed in a building that seemed to be held together by pride and plaster. The caretaker, delighted to have a visitor, gave me a personal tour in rapid Italian that I understood perhaps one word in ten of, and yet I came away with a genuine appreciation for the ingenuity of people who made entire lives from this sometimes difficult landscape.

The Ionian coast itself, when I finally reached it properly, had that slightly sleepy quality of places not yet convinced that tourism is something they need to take seriously. The beaches were a mix of sand and pebble, the water improbably clear, the beach bars unhurried. I ate grilled fish that had been swimming that morning, drank local white wine that tasted of minerals and sunshine, and watched families argue and laugh in the way that only Mediterranean families seem to manage simultaneously.

What I am trying to say, I suppose, is that Nova Siri and the country around it taught me something I keep forgetting and relearning: the best parts of travelling happen when your plans fall apart. Every wrong turn delivered something I could not have found on purpose. Every moment of confusion became, eventually, a story. I arrived thinking I would tick off sights and instead found myself collecting small, strange, accidental experiences like pebbles in a pocket.

On my last evening, I got lost one final time, wandering lanes I thought I recognised until I definitely did not. The sun set properly, stars came out in a quantity that felt almost aggressive given how few I see at home, and somewhere a dog barked and another answered. I walked until I found a landmark I knew, eventually, and made my way back to the property with scratched legs from roadside brambles and a contentment I had not expected.

I never did find that first bakery again. The farmer and his goat, I suspect, are still out there, waiting for the next confused tourist. And I have a loaf of bread in my memory that will always taste better than anything I could find on purpose.