I have never been very good at following instructions, which is probably why I ended up at the wrong end of Lake Garda last summer. The sat nav had a meltdown somewhere near Brescia, my phone decided Italian mobile data was beneath its dignity, and I found myself bumping down a gravel track that grew narrower with every metre, wondering if I was about to become a permanent feature of some Lombard farmer's olive grove.

The gravel track turned out to be the access road to our holiday property. I had been aiming for the main entrance, you see, the one with the proper signage and the welcoming approach. Instead I arrived through what I can only describe as the back door of the countryside, rattling past a vineyard where an elderly gentleman in a flat cap watched me with the patient expression of someone who has seen many lost Britons in his time. I waved. He did not wave back.

But here is the thing about getting properly lost. You notice what everyone else misses. That wrong turn took me past a tiny chapel I would never have found otherwise, its door hanging open to reveal candles flickering in the cool darkness. I stopped the car and went in, partly because I needed a moment to reconsider my life choices, partly because it felt like the sort of place that demands a pause. There was no one there. Just the smell of wax and old stone and the absolute silence that makes you realise how much noise you normally carry around with you.

The property itself sat on a gentle slope above the lake, though "gentle" became rather less gentle when I realised I had to reverse my suitcase up the gravel path because I had parked at entirely the wrong angle. The terrace looked out across water that shifted between silver and deep green depending on how the clouds moved. I spent my first evening there with a bottle of local Lugana, watching the ferry lights trace their slow paths across to the western shore, feeling rather pleased with myself for having arrived at all.

The next morning I set out with no particular destination, which is not like me. I am usually the sort of person who researches walking routes and bookmarks restaurants. But something about that chapel had loosened something. I wandered down a path that started near the property and simply kept going, through olive groves where the trees looked ancient enough to remember Roman sandals, past a small harbour where fishermen were mending nets and arguing about football in the rapid Italian that makes everything sound like an emergency.

I found a bakery in a village I cannot properly name because I never worked out where I was. The woman behind the counter spoke no English and I speak barely any Italian beyond please and thank you and the numbers up to ten. We managed anyway. She sold me a slice of torta di rose, a beautiful layered bread that pulled apart like the petals she named it for, and we communicated in gestures and smiles and the universal language of pointing at things that look delicious.

The path continued to a small beach of smooth stones where I sat for an hour without seeing another person. The water was clear enough to watch fish darting between the rocks. I thought about all the organised beaches I had passed on the main road, the rows of umbrellas and the organised fun, and I felt a little smug about my incompetence with directions.

That evening I tried to find the bakery again and failed completely, which felt exactly right. Some places are meant to be found once, by accident, and held only in memory. I found a different place instead, a tiny osteria where the owner brought me whatever he felt like cooking, which turned out to be rabbit stewed with olives and polenta that tasted of somewhere specific, somewhere I could not have reached on purpose.

I am back now, in my properly organised life with functioning sat nav and phone signal everywhere. But I keep thinking about that gravel track and the chapel and the bakery woman and the fish I watched in the clear water. I keep thinking about how the best things happened because I got it wrong from the very beginning, and how perhaps I should get things wrong more often.