I had convinced myself that driving from Ancona airport to Potenza Picena would be the romantic part of the holiday, the bit where I would wind through cypress-lined roads like some bloke in a car advert, possibly wearing linen. Instead, I spent forty-five minutes circling a roundabout near Porto Recanati because my sat nav developed what I can only describe as an existential crisis. "Turn left," it would say, then immediately "recalculating," as if shocked by its own suggestion. By the time I found the correct turning, I had seen the same petrol station three times and developed a genuine relationship with the man selling oranges by the roadside. I waved at him apologetically on each pass. He stopped waving back after the second.

The villa itself appeared suddenly, tucked up a gravel track that my hire car protested against with several alarming scraping noises. I had chosen it partly for the pool, partly for the view, and largely because the photos showed a terrace where I could drink wine while pretending to read an Italian novel. What I had not anticipated was how completely it would vanish into the landscape, surrounded by olive groves that seemed to extend in every direction like a particularly delicious ocean.

I dumped my bags with the enthusiasm of someone who had been driving in circles for the better part of an hour and immediately got lost trying to find the village. This, I now realise, was the beginning of everything good about the trip.

Potenza Picena sits on a hill, as apparently everything in Marche must, and I had intended a straightforward walk to buy bread. I took a wrong turn within minutes, following a path that narrowed until it was barely a suggestion between two dry stone walls. Brambles caught at my sleeves. A lizard the size of my hand watched me with obvious judgment. I pressed on, too embarrassed to turn back, until the path deposited me in a small clearing with a view I had not earned. The Adriatic glimmered in the distance, hazy and improbable, while below me terraced vineyards descended in orderly rows that spoke of centuries of stubborn cultivation. I had found something without trying, which is of course the only way anything worthwhile ever happens.

The next morning I deliberately got lost again, driving without purpose along roads that grew progressively smaller and more poorly surfaced. Near Montecosaro, if that was indeed where I was, I found a bakery with no sign, just an open door and the smell of warm aniseed. The woman behind the counter spoke no English and I speak Italian like a toddler, but we managed through pointing and goodwill. She gave me a biscuit to eat while she wrapped my purchase, and I ate it standing in her doorway watching an old man prune something in a garden across the street. Time moved differently there. I had nowhere to be, which was precisely where I needed to go.

I became addicted to this accidental tourism. A wrong turning near the villa led me to a tiny chapel, locked but visible through a window, its walls covered in frescoes faded to the colour of old photographs. Another afternoon, following what I thought was a shortcut back from the supermarket, I found myself on a ridge between two valleys, the wind carrying the sound of church bells from villages I could not name. I stayed until the light changed, feeling something I can only describe as the opposite of FOMO. A contentedness with missing out, with not knowing, with being precisely nowhere famous.

The pool at the villa was excellent, and I did drink wine on that terrace. But the moments I return to, the ones that surface when someone asks how Marche was, are these unplanned discoveries. The road that became a track that became a viewpoint. The bakery with no name. The afternoon I walked for hours and saw no other person, only the evidence of their labour in the dry stone walls and the tended olive groves.

On my final day I tried to find that chapel again, following what I believed was the same route, and failed completely. This felt correct, somehow. Some things belong to the version of you who was lost, not the one trying to reconstruct a map. I drove back to Ancona with my sat nav firmly switched off, taking whichever turning looked most unpromising, arriving with minutes to spare and absolutely no regrets.