I should have known the holiday was going to be interesting when I missed the turning for Sessa Cilento by a good three miles, thanks to a sat nav that decided "local road" meant "goat track." There I was, bouncing down a lane barely wide enough for a Vespa, convinced I was pioneering some new route through Campania. Turns out I was just lost. Very lost. The kind of lost where you start naming the olive trees for company.

When I finally found the place, rattled and slightly hysterical, the first thing that struck me was the silence. Not the awkward, something's-wrong silence. The proper, deep silence of hills that haven't hurried for anyone in centuries. The property sat there looking terribly pleased with itself, all terracotta and weathered stone, surrounded by enough greenery to make you forget Naples even exists.

I dumped my bags with the enthusiasm of a woman who'd just survived her own ineptitude and went for what I told myself was a "gentle wander." What it actually was, was getting lost again. On purpose this time, or so I kept telling myself. I took a path that looked unofficial, the sort that proper walkers would sniff at, and within ten minutes the village had vanished behind me. The Cilento hills rolled out like someone had flung green velvet across the landscape, and somewhere below I could hear water without being able to see it.

That sound led me to a stream, barely marked on any map I'd later check, where an old man was fishing with a patience I found almost offensive. He didn't speak English. My Italian extends to ordering wine and apologising profusely. Between us we managed a conversation about absolutely nothing, conducted in gestures and the occasional triumphant word. He showed me where wild figs grew, thick and sweet, the kind you never find in supermarkets because they don't travel. I ate three and felt like I'd discovered a secret.

The getting lost became a theme. Each morning I'd set out with vague intentions and no map, because apparently I don't learn. Down a track that started between two houses and quickly became something else entirely, I found a chapel. Not the grand sort that features in guidebooks. A tiny, crumbling thing with a door that scraped the ground when I pushed it. Inside, someone had left fresh flowers, though the nearest house was half a kilometre away. The devotion of it, the quiet persistence of care in a place most people would never see, stayed with me longer than any cathedral.

I found a bakery by following my nose down an alley I couldn't have found again if you'd paid me. The woman running it spoke rapid dialect I couldn't follow, but she understood "bread" and "please" well enough. What she gave me was still warm, crusty outside, soft within, and I ate it walking up a path that seemed to lead nowhere until suddenly it led everywhere, opening onto a view of the coast I hadn't expected, the sea glinting like someone had scattered broken glass across the horizon.

There's something humbling about realising how much you miss when you know exactly where you're going. I'm a planner by nature, lists and itineraries and sensible shoes. Sessa Cilento didn't cure me of this entirely, but it loosened something. I started to trust that wrong turns weren't wrong, just different. That the path with no signpost might lead to the fig tree, the chapel, the bakery woman who laughed at my pronunciation and gave me an extra roll anyway.

On my last evening, I got deliberately lost one final time. Found myself on a ridge as the light went golden, watching swallows dart through air that smelled of thyme and distant cooking. I thought about all the places I'd never have seen if I'd been competent with a sat nav, if I'd stuck to the recommended routes, if I'd been the sort of person who doesn't wander down goat tracks just to see.

I'm still not that person, not really. But I'm slightly less not-that-person than I was. And I have a sat nav that now lives in the glove compartment, where it belongs.