I have never been so grateful for a wonky satnav in all my life. There we were, trundling through the Sicilian countryside in our hire car, me smugly insisting the route was "definitely this way" while my other half muttered about stopping for directions. The satnav had other ideas, sending us down a track so narrow that olive branches scraped both wing mirrors. I was about to declare full marital war when we rounded a bend and found ourselves staring at a tiny chapel half-swallowed by bougainvillea, its door hanging open like an invitation.

We stopped, obviously. You do not ignore a door hanging open in Sicily.

Inside, the chapel smelled of dust and melted wax. A local woman was arranging wildflowers in a jar, and she didn't seem remotely surprised to see two sweaty Brits in hiking sandals. She pointed us toward a path behind the building, saying something rapid in Sicilian that I caught perhaps three words of. We nodded enthusiastically, as you do, and set off walking.

The path became a trail, the trail became a scramble between rocks, and somewhere in the middle of convincing myself this counted as "adventure," we emerged onto a terrace of ancient dry-stone walls. Lemon trees everywhere. Not the tidy orchard sort, but wild, gnarled things with fruit dropped and fermenting in the heat, the whole place humming with bees. No sign, no fence, no entry fee. Just centuries of someone tending this patch of hillside and then, apparently, wandering off for lunch and never bothering with the tourist board.

By the time we actually found our holiday home in Partinico, I had completely forgotten to be cross about the journey. The property sat among its own olive groves, a low stone building with a terrace that caught the afternoon sun. The owner had left us bread still warm from the oven, local olive oil in an unlabelled bottle, and a handwritten note suggesting we try the bakery in town "before seven, or Giuseppe goes to play cards."

That first evening, we intended to pop out for supplies and come straight back. We took a wrong turn leaving the property, ended up on a road that kept climbing, and found ourselves in what I can only describe as a village that time had politely forgotten. A single bar with three tables outside, all occupied by elderly men who turned as one to examine us. We ordered beers in our best phrasebook Italian. The barman produced them without comment, then a plate of almonds roasted in salt and rosemary that he had clearly just grabbed from somewhere in the back. We sat there as the light went golden, listening to a conversation we couldn't understand but somehow followed anyway, mostly about football and someone's cousin's tractor.

The next morning, determined to be organised, we set out for the bakery with a map. We got lost within four minutes. This time we found a courtyard where a woman was hanging laundry and singing something operatic. She directed us, via much pointing and laughing at my pronunciation, down an alley that opened into a small piazza with a fountain that didn't work but looked marvellous. The bakery was there, Giuseppe was indeed gone, but his wife sold us still-warm cannoli and told us about a beach "nobody uses" that her grandmother swam at.

We never found that beach, not exactly. We found several others, each more pebbly and perfect than the last, each discovered by taking the road that looked least promising. We found a ruined tower where swallows nested, a grove of carob trees where someone had left a rusted chair as if expecting visitors, a trattoria with no menu that served us pasta with sardines and never told us what it cost until we asked.

Back at the house each evening, we'd sit on that terrace with our accidental discoveries, a bottle of Nero d'Avola, and the sense that we'd somehow cheated at tourism. No queues, no audio guides, no coach parties. Just the particular magic of Sicily when you stop trying to find things and let the place find you instead.

I still don't know the name of that chapel. The satnav never recovered, and we abandoned it in Palermo on the way home. Some things, I have decided, are better without coordinates.