The drive down from Naples was going well until I confidently ignored the sat nav for what I called "a more scenic route" and promptly found myself wedged between two stone walls on a lane barely wide enough for a Vespa, let alone my hire car. A local nonna appeared from nowhere, arms crossed, watching me attempt a seventeen-point turn while her goat chewed something judgmentally nearby. I was certain I'd become a village anecdote before I'd even arrived.

By the time I reached the Perdifumo, perched high in the hills above the Cilento coast, I'd sweated through my shirt and developed a twitch every time a wall appeared in my peripheral vision. But stepping out onto the terrace, I forgot the whole sorry episode. The place clings to the hillside like it grew there organically, all weathered stone and terracotta, with a view that rolls down through olive groves to the distant glimmer of the Tyrrhenian Sea. My host, Marco, handed me a cold beer without being asked and said something in Italian that I chose to interpret as "you're not the first idiot we've rescued."

The property itself is the sort of unshowy gem that makes you feel smug for finding it. A converted farmhouse with thick walls that keep the heat at bay, simple rustic furniture that has actually been used rather than staged for photographs, and a kitchen that smells permanently of garlic and tomatoes from previous occupants. I immediately abandoned any plans to eat out and instead walked to the village to buy provisions, promptly getting lost again within four minutes of leaving the gate.

This second disorientation turned out to be the making of my trip. I wandered down a track I thought led to the main road and found myself instead in a grove of ancient olive trees, their trunks twisted into impossible shapes. An old man was harvesting with a long stick and a tarpaulin, and without a word of shared language, he pressed a handful of just-picked olives into my palm and pointed me toward a path I'd never have noticed. It emerged above a tiny chapel, Santa Maria delle Grazie, that doesn't appear on any tourist map I've since consulted, its frescoed interior cool and silent except for the buzz of a single fly.

The following days became a pattern of deliberate wrong turns. I found a bakery in Perdifumo village proper that opens when the owner feels like it and sells still-warm focaccia that ruins all other bread forever. I stumbled into a working farm where they make mozzarella daily and let you watch, offering tastes so fresh the cheese practically pulses. One afternoon, following what I thought was a shortcut to the local bar, I discovered a valley of wild fennel where butterflies the size of my hand drifted between the yellow flowers like drunken tourists.

Marco found me there, somehow unsurprised. He'd spotted my car still parked at the property and assumed I'd wandered off. "You like to be lost," he observed, not quite a question. I started to defend myself, then stopped. He was right, in a way I hadn't recognised. There's a particular pleasure in surrendering to uncertainty, in discovering that your incompetence has consequences you wouldn't trade.

The Perdifumo became my base for these accidental expeditions, its solid presence waiting each evening with that view and another cold beer. I never did master the lanes without at least one wrong turning. On my final morning, the nonna and her goat appeared again as I crept past her wall, and this time she waved, almost smiling. I'd become a slightly more welcome village anecdote, perhaps, or at least a predictable one. Some people, I suppose, you learn to expect.