I have never been a natural navigator, and my first trip to Peschiera del Garda proved this beyond all doubt. We had flown into Verona, collected our hire car, and set off with that particular confidence that comes from having printed directions and a fully charged phone. Within forty minutes, both had failed me. The phone decided Verona's ring road was an excellent place to lose signal entirely, and my directions, it transpired, featured a crucial left turn that simply did not exist. I found myself instead on a narrow lane between vineyards, my partner raising an eyebrow in that way she has, the one that says she is choosing to find this amusing rather than alarming.

The lane became a track. The track became something I hesitate to call a road at all. We bumped along past crumbling stone walls and rows of vines heavy with grapes, the afternoon sun turning everything golden and slightly unreal. I was preparing my defence speech when we crested a small rise and found ourselves looking down at water. Not Lake Garda itself, but a quiet backwater, a bend in the river Mincio where locals had moored small fishing boats. An elderly man sat on a plastic chair, rod in hand, watching us with the patient curiosity of someone who has seen many lost tourists.

I wound down the window and attempted my best "scusi." He pointed back the way we had come, then made a gesture that seemed to suggest a longer route, then paused, scratched his chin, and changed his mind entirely. What followed was ten minutes of elaborate directions delivered entirely in Italian, of which I understood perhaps one word in ten. But his enthusiasm was infectious, and somehow we communicated through a mixture of hand signals, place names, and my enthusiastic nodding at entirely inappropriate moments.

Following his guidance took us through farmland and past a tiny chapel with a rusted bell, then suddenly onto a proper road with signs pointing towards Peschiera. We arrived at our holiday property rather later than planned, my dignity in tatters but my spirits unexpectedly high. The owner, a practical woman named Carla, merely laughed when I explained our route. "This is the best way to find things," she said, handing over keys and a map she had annotated herself with arrows and small drawings.

That evening, rather than heading straight for the lakefront restaurants, we walked in the opposite direction, towards where I estimated that backwater might be. We found it easily enough, and a small trattoria beside it that Carla had marked with a tiny fish symbol. The terrace overlooked the water, and we ate risotto with perch that had presumably been swimming nearby that morning, watching herons stalk through the shallows. No English menus, no tourist prices, just a proprietor who seemed genuinely surprised and pleased to see us.

The next morning I attempted to reach the lakefront properly, following the main road as any sensible person would. But I spotted a gap between buildings, a narrow passage that seemed to lead towards water. It brought us out at a small beach, more pebbles than sand, where local families had set up umbrellas and children played in the shallows. A kiosk sold granita in paper cups, and we spent a contented hour watching the world drift by, feeling rather pleased with ourselves for having stumbled upon it.

By day three, I had abandoned any pretence of purposeful navigation. We followed alleys that looked interesting, took turning circles that led to unexpected piazzas, and twice found ourselves at the same small bakery where an ancient machine produced the most extraordinary pistachio biscuits. Each wrong turn seemed to reveal something the guidebooks had missed: a workshop where a man still made wooden boats by hand, a garden of citrus trees hidden behind a high wall, a bar where elderly men played cards at midday and tolerated our terrible Italian with good humour.

My partner observed that I had accidentally developed a travel philosophy. I prefer to think I have simply learned to lean into my incompetence. The property itself became our anchor point, a place to return to with discoveries to unpack, each evening spent on the terrace with wine from a vineyard we had passed, planning tomorrow's deliberate lack of plan.

On our final day, I attempted to find that first backwater again, hoping to thank the fisherman if he was there. I failed, naturally. The lanes all looked different in morning light, and I took three wrong turns before admitting defeat. But I found a different waterway entirely, a canal lined with poplars where a family of ducks paddled in strict formation, and a woman selling figs from her garden gate. I bought two kilos, more than we could possibly eat, and arrived back at the property triumphant and slightly sticky.

We ate figs for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and brought the remainder home in a plastic bag that gradually became more alarming as the journey progressed. They were, I maintain, the finest figs I have ever tasted, entirely because they were found rather than sought. I have kept Carla's annotated map, with its arrows and tiny fish, as a reminder that my worst quality as a traveller might actually be my best.