I have never been a natural navigator, and Tuscany decided to remind me of this roughly thirty seconds after I collected the hire car at Pisa. The sat nav had the confidence of a man who has never once been wrong, and I had the misplaced optimism of someone who thought "Castellina in Chianti" sounded straightforward enough to pronounce, let alone locate. Three wrong roundabouts and one accidental tour of a vineyard's private drive later, I found myself on a gravel track so narrow that my wing mirrors developed an anxious twitch. This was not the graceful arrival I had imagined. This was not the sort of scene where you emerge from the vehicle with sunglasses and a knowing smile. This was me, reversing forty yards past an extremely judgmental goat, wondering whether the farmer watching from his terrace was about to offer directions or simply call the authorities.

The property sat on a ridge that I had absolutely not intended to find. The booking had mentioned views, but I had assumed this meant the polite, framed sort you get from a designated window. Instead, the place opened onto a valley that rolled away like someone had unfurled a particularly smug carpet of vines and olive groves. I stood there with my still-locked suitcase, goat hair on my bumper, and felt the peculiar shame of the accidentally fortunate. I had got lost and found something better than what I was looking for. This would become the theme of the week.

The following morning I set out with deliberate purpose, which in my case meant choosing the road that looked least like a road. Within ten minutes I was hopelessly adrift in a network of cypress-lined tracks that seemed designed by someone who fundamentally disagreed with the concept of through-routes. The sat nav had given up and was suggesting I return to a road it recognised, which I interpreted as weakness. I pressed on, and found a chapel. Not a famous one. Not one that appears on ceramic plates in airport gift shops. Just a tiny stone building with a door that opened with the resigned creak of something that has witnessed centuries of poor decisions. Inside, the air smelled of cold stone and old wax, and someone had left fresh flowers in a jar that might once have held olives. There was no sign, no opening hours, no gift shop. I sat on the step and ate the sandwich I had packed for a completely different destination, and watched a hawk trace lazy circles over vineyards that had no business being so photogenic.

Getting lost became my daily ritual. I abandoned the sat nav in the glove compartment like a disappointing relative and simply drove until the tarmac ran out. One afternoon I followed a track that deteriorated into two ruts between grass, which terminated at a farm where an elderly woman was making pecorino in a shed that predated most countries. She spoke no English, I speak Italian with the fluency of a confused toddler, and yet somehow I left with cheese, a glass of something red that she poured from a plastic jug, and the distinct impression that I had accidentally gatecrashed someone's actual life. She did not seem to mind. Or perhaps she did, and the cheese was simply her method of processing the intrusion.

There was the afternoon I took a wrong turn seeking a recommended restaurant and found instead a village so small that the cafe was also the post office and the man serving coffee was also, I suspect, the mayor. The coffee cost one euro and came with a biscuit that he had baked himself, apparently, though he mentioned this with the casualness of someone discussing the weather. I stayed for two hours. The restaurant I had originally sought was never found, and I cannot pretend this bothers me.

The property itself became my base for these happy accidents. Each evening I would return with some unplanned discovery: a vineyard whose owner had insisted on a tasting I had not requested, a path through woods that led to a ruined tower occupied by a very territorial cat, a bakery in a hamlet that appeared on no map and produced bread that made me genuinely emotional. I would sit on the terrace with a glass of the local Chianti Classico, watching the light change over the valley I had found by mistake, and consider how much poorer my holiday would have been if I had actually known where I was going.

On my final morning I attempted to find the chapel again, deliberately this time, and failed completely. It had vanished back into the landscape, or perhaps I had invented it. I prefer to think it is still there, waiting for the next person stubborn or foolish enough to ignore their sat nav. I drove back to Pisa without a single wrong turn, which felt less like competence and more like a small tragedy.