I have never been brilliant with directions, which is how I ended up driving the wrong way down a dusty track in Costa Rei, convinced I was following the sat nav to our holiday let. The track became narrower, then bumpier, then essentially a goat path. My partner sat in silence, gripping the door handle, until we emerged at a tiny cove that was not on any map I had seen. The water was absurdly turquoise. A fisherman was mending nets by an upturned boat. We had found something by complete accident, and it set the tone for the entire fortnight.

Our actual accommodation, when we finally reached it, turned out to be one of those understated villa complexes that dot the southern Sardinian coast. White walls, terracotta roof, the obligatory bougainvillea climbing somewhere it should not. But I barely thought about the villa that first evening. I kept thinking about that cove, about how we would never have seen it if I had not been spectacularly incompetent at following instructions.

The next morning we set out with no particular plan, which is not like me. Usually I am the person with the spreadsheet. But Costa Rei had already loosened something. We drove east on a road that looked like it might lead somewhere interesting, which is of course code for somewhere completely wrong. The tarmac gave out after twenty minutes. We pressed on through scrubland and low granite hills, the sea occasionally flashing through gaps in the vegetation like someone winking at us.

We found a second cove, smaller than the first, reachable only by scrambling down a slope of rounded stones that rolled beneath your feet like ball bearings. An old woman was gathering something from the rocks, seaweed perhaps, and she nodded at us without surprise, as if people stumbled in every day. The water was shallow for ages, warm as a bath, and completely empty except for a few darting fish that investigated our toes with scientific curiosity.

By day four I had abandoned the hire car map entirely. We started taking turns choosing random turns, the rule being no backtracking unless absolutely necessary. This is how we discovered the bread van. It appeared on a track that was definitely not meant for vehicles, a battered three-wheeler with a horn that played a tinny version of something operatic. The driver sold us pane carasau that was still warm, and pecorino cheese wrapped in paper. We ate it sitting on a wall beside a field where sheep regarded us with the mild contempt sheep reserve for tourists.

There was a moment, perhaps around day six, when I realised I could not actually tell anyone precisely where we had been. I had photographs of rock pools and wild rosemary and a derelict shepherd's hut with a fig tree growing through its roof, but no names, no grid references. It felt strange at first, this lightness of being unlocated. Then it felt like the entire point. I spend my normal life knowing exactly where I am, digitally pinned at every moment. Being genuinely lost was a kind of freedom I had forgotten existed.

We did eventually find a beach with a name, Cala Sinzias, though we approached it from the landward side through pine woods, emerging suddenly onto sand so fine it squeaked beneath our feet. Even this felt like an accident, a reward for wandering. We bought granita from a man with a cool box and no fixed stall, who appeared to operate on pure intuition about where thirsty people might materialise.

The villa became merely a place to sleep, to rinse salt from our skin, to plan tomorrow's purposeful purposelessness. I stopped checking my phone for signal. I stopped caring whether the restaurants had reviews. One evening we followed music to what turned out to be a village festa, some saint's day or other, where elderly men played accordions and we ate roast suckling pig from paper plates, standing in a square that I could not find again if you paid me.

On our final morning I tried to retrace our steps to that first cove, the one from the wrong turning. I failed completely. The goat path had vanished, or perhaps I had invented it, or perhaps Sardinia simply shifts its landscape when you are not looking, which I would not put past it. We drove to the airport with the windows down, smelling wild fennel and sea salt, and I felt genuinely grateful for my terrible sense of direction. Some people find themselves through careful planning. I found something better by getting it completely wrong.