I have always believed that the best holidays begin with a small disaster, and my trip to Lake Como did not disappoint. The plan was simple: fly to Milan, hire a Fiat smaller than my kitchen table, and drive north to a stone cottage near Menaggio that I had booked through a friend of a friend who swore it had "character." What I got instead was a sat nav with a vendetta and a petrol station sandwich that would haunt me for days.

The mishap came just outside Como town. I took what I thought was a scenic shortcut, following a sign that promised a "panoramica" route. Twenty minutes later I was wedged between a stone wall and a lorry carrying olive oil, my wing mirror kissing someone else's wing mirror in a tunnel clearly built for horses. The lorry driver found it hilarious. I found it less so, particularly when I realised I had been holding my breath for forty seconds. We reversed in a sort of automotive dance, him gesturing wildly, me sweating through a shirt I had intended to save for dinner. I emerged into daylight to find myself not on the lakeside road at all, but somewhere above Tremezzo, on a track that my hire agreement definitely did not cover.

Here is where the holiday truly began. Rather than panic, I abandoned the sat nav to its dark thoughts and simply drove downward toward glimpses of water. The track became a lane, the lane became a path between lemon groves, and suddenly I was in a hamlet called Acquaseria that I cannot find properly on most maps. An old woman was hanging washing between two houses and directed me to what she called "the little beach" with gestures that suggested I was an idiot but a welcome one. I found it ten minutes later: a sliver of shingle where three local boys were diving from a rusted pontoon, their shouts echoing off the mountains. No tourists. No gelato stand. Just water so clear I could see pebbles ten feet down, and an old man in a folding chair who nodded at me as if I had kept an appointment we made years ago.

I never did find that cottage the first night. I stayed instead in a family-run place above Menaggio, discovered because I stopped to ask a man pruning roses and he phoned his cousin. Dinner was whatever they were having: polenta with rabbit, cooked without ceremony and served with wine from a jug with no label. The cousin spoke no English. I speak restaurant Italian at best. We managed fine.

The next morning, properly lost again, I stumbled onto a path behind Griante that climbed through chestnut woods. I had meant to walk for half an hour. Three hours later I emerged at a chapel called San Martino, locked but surrounded by wild sage and views across the lake to Bellagio that no viewpoint in any guidebook has matched. My legs ached. My phone had died. I sat on the step and ate the last of my petrol station sandwich, which by then tasted almost acceptable.

That became the pattern. I stopped trying to reach places and started letting wrong turns lead me. A missed ferry landing took me to Rezzonico, where a crumbling castle keeps watch over a harbour of fishing boats painted in colours that have faded to something better than bright. A closed road sent me up to Plesio, where I found a cheesemaker working alone in a barn, his fontina aging on wooden shelves while cats watched from the rafters. He let me taste. I bought more than I could carry. We discussed, with hands and smiles, the problem of British cheese, about which he was politely devastating.

The stone cottage, when I finally found it, was charming enough. But I spent less time there than planned. Each morning I would set out with vague intentions and return with discoveries: a bar in Ossuccio where the coffee costs half what it does lakeside and comes with free advice about which paths are currently passable; a swimming spot below Lenno where the Roman ruins are not the advertised villa but the fragments of old walls you find by following a stream until it meets the lake, hidden by reeds, frequented only by herons and one elderly swimmer who has been doing lengths there since 1963.

What I learned, and what I keep thinking about now that I am home, is that my best days came from surrender. I am not naturally good at this. I like plans, confirmations, knowing where lunch will happen. But Lake Como, or perhaps Italy generally, rewards the opposite impulse. The place is too old, too layered, too indifferent to your schedule. You cannot conquer it with research. You can only wander until something finds you.

I think about that tunnel sometimes. The terror of it, the comedy, the olive oil lorry driver's magnificent indifference to my panic. Without him, without my wrong turn, I would have had the holiday I planned: efficient, scenic, forgettable. Instead I got something messier and much better. I got lost, and stayed lost, and found that the lake gives up its secrets only to people who are not looking for them.