I should have known the holiday was going to be interesting when I confidently marched up to the wrong hire car at Alghero Airport and spent a solid five minutes trying to wedge my suitcase into someone else's Fiat Panda. The actual owner appeared with a look of polite confusion that only the British abroad can truly muster. I laughed, they laughed, and I shuffled off to find my actual vehicle three rows over, trying to look like I had meant to test their boot size all along.

The drive to Stintino took about fifty minutes, winding through Sardinia's northwestern countryside with the windows down and my questionable Italian playlist blasting. I had booked a villa through Novasol, somewhere between Stintino village and the coast, and the directions seemed straightforward enough. They were not straightforward enough. I took a wrong turn somewhere near a field of very judgmental goats and found myself on a dirt track that grew narrower with every metre. The sat nav had given up and was suggesting I make a U-turn into what appeared to be a dry stone wall.

This is where the magic started, though I did not realise it at the time. I was too busy sweating and reversing in what I hoped was a confident manner. The track led me past an old shepherd's shelter, half-collapsed and beautiful, and then suddenly opened onto a small cove I could never have found on purpose. No signs, no car park, just a curve of pale sand and water so clear I actually said "blimey" out loud to absolutely no one. I sat there for ten minutes, engine off, feeling rather pleased with myself for being so brilliantly lost.

When I finally found the villa, the owner was waiting with keys and remarkable patience. She explained, in excellent English thankfully, that the cove I had stumbled upon was locally known but rarely visited by tourists. "You found the back way," she said, smiling. I chose not to mention the goats.

The villa itself was simple and spotless, with a terrace that caught the evening sun perfectly. But I was already itching to get lost again. Over the next few days, I abandoned any proper plans. I wandered down unmarked paths behind the property, finding a tiny chapel crumbling into an olive grove, its door hanging open, wildflowers growing through the floor. I followed a fisherman carrying buckets down what looked like a private driveway and discovered a rocky platform where locals were grilling sea bream over driftwood fires. They nodded at me. I nodded back. No one asked me to leave.

One morning I set out for what the map suggested was a straightforward walk to La Pelosa beach, the famous one with the tower. I never arrived. Instead I took a fork that looked interesting, ended up in scratchy maquis scrub, and emerged above a miniature bay where an elderly man was harvesting sea urchins with a kitchen knife. He showed me how to open one, the orange roe glistening, and I ate it right there with nothing but salt air and my own surprise. It cost me nothing. It meant everything.

Getting lost became the whole point. I found a bakery in Stintino village by following my nose down an alley that looked like a dead end. I found a bar where the owner made his own mirto liqueur and insisted I try three varieties before noon. I found myself, slightly tipsy, sitting on a wall watching fishermen mend nets, feeling utterly foreign and completely at home simultaneously.

The mishap at the airport felt like weeks ago. That version of me, so certain about which car was his, so reliant on directions working properly, seemed like a different person entirely. Sardinia had gently dismantled my need to know where I was going. The villa became my base for glorious uncertainty, a place to return with sand in unexpected places and stories that started with "so I took this random turn..."

On my final evening, I walked down that original wrong track on purpose. The goats were still there, still judgmental. The cove was empty. I swam until my shoulders ached, then floated on my back watching the sky turn pink. I had not planned this. I had not planned any of it. That was precisely why it worked.