I have never been very good at following instructions, which is how I ended up driving the wrong way down a one-way street in Ragusa's historic centre with a hire car the size of a small boat and a sat nav that had apparently given up on me entirely. The street was roughly the width of a spaghetti strand, flanked by honey-coloured baroque buildings that seemed to lean in and tut disapprovingly. A man on a Vespa simply raised his eyebrows, lifted his espresso cup in what I choose to believe was solidarity rather than mockery, and squeezed past my wing mirror with millimetres to spare.

We had flown into Catania, collected the car, and promptly got lost before even leaving the airport car park. My partner, ever the optimist, suggested this boded well for adventure. I suggested it boded well for divorce. Three hours of winding through the Iblean countryside later, with the scent of wild fennel and orange blossom drifting through open windows, we finally spotted our holiday home perched on the hillside above Ragusa Ibla.

The property itself was one of those traditional Sicilian country houses, all thick stone walls and terracotta tiles, with a small pool that glinted like a promise in the afternoon sun. But here is the thing about getting gloriously, hopelessly lost: you stumble upon places no guidebook has ever bothered with.

On our first morning, determined to find a supermarket, we took a wrong turn somewhere near Donnafugata and found ourselves on a dirt track that wound through ancient dry-stone walls. The track ended at a tiny farmstead where an elderly woman was selling ricotta she had made that very morning. It sat in woven baskets, still warm, impossibly creamy. We bought two portions and ate them with our fingers, leaning against a wall that had probably stood there since before my great-grandparents were born. She spoke no English, we speak barely any Italian, but she laughed at our attempts and pressed extra bread into our hands.

Another afternoon, trying to find a beach that someone at the property had vaguely mentioned, we missed the proper turning and ended up in Scoglitti instead. The harbour was working, unglamorous, full of men mending nets and arguing about football. We ate grilled sardines at a plastic table on the quayside, watching fishermen unload crates of still-twitching squid. The owner of the shack refused to tell us the price beforehand, simply waved his hands and said "poco, poco." It cost less than a coffee back in London.

The real discovery came when we got lost on foot, wandering the tangle of lanes below our property. I had insisted on a "short cut" that was neither short nor, technically, a cut. We emerged in what I can only describe as someone's vegetable garden, except the someone was an ancient olive grove with trees so gnarled they looked like they were telling stories. A low stone building turned out to be an abandoned mill, its grinding stones still in place, wild fig trees growing through the roof. We sat there for an hour, eating the almonds we had pocketed from breakfast, watching a falcon circle the valley below.

There is something peculiarly liberating about surrendering to disorientation. Back home I plan everything, spreadsheet my holidays, review restaurants before booking. Here, the wrong turning was always the right one. The bakery we found at dawn because we were returning from a failed attempt to find a sunrise viewpoint. The tiny museum of agricultural tools, unlocked and unstaffed, that we wandered into thinking it was a cafe. The natural spring where locals fill enormous bottles, hidden down a track that our car barely survived.

By the end of the week, we stopped even pretending to navigate properly. We would point the car roughly toward the coast or the hills or the nearest village name that sounded musical, and see where the road deposited us. Usually it deposited us somewhere involving excellent cheese and a view that made us slightly emotional.

On our final evening, watching the sun set over Ragusa Ibla from the property's terrace, the golden light catching the cathedral dome below, my partner asked if I wanted to try finding that particular restaurant we had read about. I looked at the map, folded it deliberately wrong, and suggested we simply head downhill and trust to luck.