I have always believed that the best holidays happen when your sat-nav gives up and your sense of adventure takes over. My recent trip to Lago di Como proved this theory in spectacular fashion, beginning with a navigational mishap that set the tone for one of the most delightful weeks I have spent anywhere.

The journey from Malpensa Airport had been going swimmingly until I decided I knew better than the rental car's GPS. Somewhere between Como town and my intended destination, I took what I believed to be a charming shortcut. It was not. It was a dead-end track used by local olive farmers, and I found myself reversing for nearly half a mile past bemused goats and one very judgmental donkey. By the time I reached the property, my partner was giving me that particular look that says both "I love you" and "you are an absolute liability behind the wheel."

The villa itself sits in a quiet spot above the western shore, and arriving flustered and slightly sheepish actually enhanced the experience. There is something wonderfully grounding about stepping onto a terrace with lake views so perfect they look airbrushed, when five minutes earlier you were being honked at by an Italian nonno on a Vespa. The property has that lived-in, unpretentious quality I always hope for but rarely find. Terracotta floors, slightly mismatched garden furniture, a kitchen that clearly hosts proper cooking rather than just holiday toast-making. I felt immediately at home, which was fortunate given my driving confidence needed rebuilding.

We spent that first afternoon doing precisely nothing except drinking cheap local wine and watching the ferry boats trace their patient routes across the water. The lake changes colour every hour, we discovered. Morning brings a milky jade, afternoon deepens to proper Mediterranean blue, and evening settles into something silvery and still. I had packed three books and read perhaps six pages all week. The view proved too distracting, and I am not complaining.

The following morning, determined to redeem myself after the goat incident, I suggested we simply walk without destination. This proved to be the holiday's masterstroke. Within ten minutes of leaving the villa, we stumbled upon a tiny chapel crammed with faded ex-voto paintings, the kind that thank saints for miraculous survivals from farming accidents and childbirth. No signpost advertised it. No guidebook mentioned it. A local woman was sweeping the steps and simply nodded us inside as if visitors were an everyday occurrence, though the dust suggested otherwise.

That set the pattern. We found a bakery in what appeared to be someone's front room, selling bread still warm from a wood-fired oven that must have predated the Risorgimento. We discovered a swimming spot where concrete steps descended into clear water, clearly used by generations of local families, completely absent from any tourist map. An elderly man there explained through generous gestures that his grandfather had helped pour those steps in 1953. He offered us figs from his garden. We accepted, naturally.

Getting deliberately lost became our daily ritual. One afternoon we followed a path upward through chestnut woods, expecting a viewpoint, and found instead a ruined stone house where someone had installed a weathered piano. It played, after a fashion, and my partner attempted Chopin while lizards watched from the walls. Another morning, wandering the lanes above Griante, we encountered a tiny vineyard where the owner insisted on pouring samples of his rough red at ten in the morning. We purchased three bottles and carried them home like trophies.

The property's location proved ideal for this approach. Close enough to Como for practicalities, yet positioned where genuine countryside still exists between the grand villas and tourist thoroughfares. I began to understand why the lake has captivated visitors for centuries. Not the famous gardens, though they have their place, but these accidental encounters with ordinary life continuing in extraordinary surroundings.

By week's end, I had developed genuine affection for my own incompetence. That wrong turn, that goat-track detour, had somehow granted permission to abandon planning entirely. I arrived thinking I would tick off sights and instead found myself collecting moments that belonged only to us. The judgmental donkey, the chapel, the piano in the woods, the morning wine. These will stay with me longer than any guided tour possibly could.

We left with our boot full of wine and our heads full of unplanned discoveries, already plotting our return. Next time, I have promised my partner, I will follow the sat-nav. She laughed for rather longer than felt strictly necessary. Some things, I suspect, are better found by accident anyway.