I have never been particularly good with directions, which is how I found myself reversing a hire car down a cobbled lane barely wide enough for a Vespa, convinced I was about to become a permanent fixture of Castellabate. The sat nav had cheerfully announced we had arrived at our holiday let some three hundred yards back, at what turned out to be a lemon grove owned by a remarkably unbothered old chap in a flat cap. I waved apologetically. He waved back, entirely unsurprised. This, I would learn, is simply how things unfold in Campania.

We had flown into Naples, collected our slightly dented Fiat, and spent the drive south arguing about whether the signs for "Castellabate" were pointing to a town, a castle, or perhaps a state of mind. The answer, delightfully, is all three. The historic centre perches on a hilltop like something from a faded postcard, all honey-coloured stone and terracotta roofs tumbling down towards the Tyrrhenian Sea. Our property, when we finally located it, sat on the lower slopes with a terrace that made the earlier automotive humiliation instantly worthwhile. I stood there with a warm beer from the boot, watching fishing boats drift across a bay the colour of proper blue ink, and felt that particular holiday smugness that only comes after mild suffering.

The next morning, determined to explore properly, we set off without much of a plan. This was, in retrospect, the best decision we made. Castellabate's old town is a maze of stepped alleys and sudden archways, the sort of place where Google Maps throws up its digital hands in despair. We wandered past a bakery whose owner was shaping sfogliatelle with the focused intensity of a surgeon, the air thick with orange blossom and warm butter. I attempted to order two in my questionable Italian and somehow ended up with six, plus a vigorous hand gesture that I believe was meant to instruct me on proper pastry appreciation.

Getting properly lost took perhaps twenty minutes. We found ourselves in a tiny piazza where three elderly gents played cards with the solemn concentration of chess grandmasters, barely glancing up as we passed. A cat followed us for a while, judging our choices, then abandoned us for a sunnier doorstep. The alleys grew narrower, the laundry hung overhead more colourful, and eventually we popped out at a viewpoint I cannot name because I never found it again. The sea stretched uninterrupted to the horizon, and somewhere below, invisible, waves broke against rocks where a single fisherman stood motionless as a heron.

That afternoon, descending by a different route entirely, we stumbled upon a beach cove no guidebook had mentioned. Punta Licosa lay at the end of a rough track, more pebbles than sand, with water so clear I could watch tiny fish inspecting my submerged feet. A local family had set up a modest picnic, children shrieking as they leapt from a low rock. We stayed until the light turned golden, sharing the last of our accidental sfogliatelle, and I thought about how often my worst navigational instincts lead to the best outcomes.

By evening we found our way back to the property terrace, slightly sunburned, thoroughly directionally confused, and entirely content. Somewhere below, church bells began their evening song. I poured a glass of local Falanghina, watched the fishing boats return, and decided that getting lost in Castellabate is not a mistake at all. It is, really, the whole point of coming.