The Sat Nav had other ideas about how to reach Fabrica di Roma. Instead of the straightforward route from Rome, it sent me down a gravel track that grew narrower with every turn, until I was essentially driving through someone's olive grove. A very irate gentleman in a flat cap waved his arms at me. I waved back cheerfully, as if this was precisely where I meant to be. He did not look convinced. Neither, frankly, was I.

Three-point turns on a forty-five-degree incline are not my forte. The hire car's clutch smelt like a bonfire by the time I emerged onto actual tarmac, dusty and triumphant and forty minutes late. My partner had that particular expression of long-suffering patience that comes from fifteen years of my navigational disasters.

The villa itself appeared suddenly around a bend, and I forgot the whole ordeal in an instant. A low stone building the colour of honey, with shutters painted that particular faded green you only find in Italy. Terracotta pots everywhere, most containing something either thriving heroically or having given up entirely. The key was in a rusted metal box, which took ten minutes and some creative language to open.

We dumped our bags and did what we always do when arriving somewhere rural: went for a wander with no particular destination. This is how we found the first of several accidental treasures. A path behind the villa led through chestnut woods, clearly used by local dogs and not much else. Twenty minutes of gentle descent, and we emerged into a tiny valley where an abandoned stone farmhouse sat crumbling beside a stream. Someone had once loved this place. There were remnants of a vegetable garden, now wild with fennel and poppies. We sat on a fallen wall and ate the bread and pecorino we'd grabbed from a service station, feeling absurdly pleased with ourselves for discovering what clearly nobody else had bothered to find.

The next morning, determined to buy proper supplies, we set off for what the map suggested was a village with shops. Missed the turning. Found ourselves on a ridge road with views across volcanic hills that looked positively prehistoric. Then spotted a hand-painted sign for "vino" pointing down an even smaller track. The vineyard was essentially someone's back garden with serious ambition. An ancient woman emerged from a shed, produced a bottle from beneath a cloth, and charged us six euros. We drank it that evening watching swallows dart about the villa's small pool, which had seen better decades but was utterly glorious for all that.

Getting lost became our deliberate strategy. A wrong turn seeking a recommended restaurant led us instead to a village called Carbognano, where a sagging bar served pizza from a wood oven to four elderly men playing cards. Nobody spoke English. We pointed at things and smiled. The pizza was magnificent. The men ignored us completely, then insisted on buying us limoncello.

On our final afternoon, we took the chestnut path again and went further, scrambling down to where the stream met a larger watercourse. There we found a natural pool, deep and green, with dragonflies skimming the surface. My partner went in first, yelping at the cold. I followed, because pride. We floated there like the only people in Lazio, which perhaps we were, at least in that exact spot.

I thought about that first wrong turn, the irate gentleman, the smell of burning clutch. The best things, I reflected, watching late afternoon light filter through oak branches, rarely come from following instructions. My phone had no signal. The Sat Nav sat ignored in the hire car. I had never felt less lost.