I have never been a natural navigator. My phone died somewhere between Pisa and the winding roads of Lunigiana, leaving me with nothing but a scrap of paper with "Fivizzano" scribbled on it and a growing sense that I had made a terrible mistake. The hire car's sat nav had given up twenty minutes earlier, apparently offended by the narrowness of the lanes. So there I was, crawling past stone farmhouses with no idea whether I was heading towards my holiday let or the French border.

That is how I found the bakery. I took a wrong turn, obviously, and ended up in a hamlet that does not appear on any map I have since consulted. An old woman was sweeping her doorstep, and I wound down the window to ask for directions in my appalling Italian. She looked at me, looked at the car, and pointed to a building that smelled of warm bread and wood smoke. "Pane," she said, as if this solved everything. It rather did. I emerged ten minutes later with a loaf of ciabatta still steaming from the oven, some pecorino I did not plan to buy, and directions delivered entirely through hand gestures involving several left turns past a cypress tree that looked, to be honest, identical to every other cypress tree.

The Fivizzano property itself appeared suddenly, as these places do, around a bend where the valley opened up. It was not what I expected. I had prepared myself for rustic charm, perhaps slightly frayed around the edges. Instead I found a proper stone house with a terrace that looked over olive groves and, in the distance, the Apuan Alps catching the late afternoon light. I stood there with my still-warm bread, feeling rather pleased with my complete inability to follow directions.

The next morning I set out with deliberate intention to get lost. This is not something I would recommend in most places. In Tuscany, however, it turns out to be a legitimate strategy. I walked down a track that started beside the house, telling myself I would follow it for half an hour and then turn back. Three hours later I was sitting on a wall in another nameless hamlet, watching a man prune vines and drinking water from a fountain that probably predated my entire family. He did not seem surprised to see me. Perhaps walkers appear from nowhere regularly in these parts, drawn by the same magnetic wrongness that pulled me in.

I found a chapel that afternoon. It was locked, naturally, but the door frame had been rubbed smooth by centuries of hands, and someone had left wildflowers in a niche beside it. There was no sign, no information board, nothing to indicate why it was there or who maintained it. I sat on the step and ate the remains of my bakery cheese, feeling something I struggle to name. Peace, perhaps, though that sounds too grand. More like the quiet satisfaction of being somewhere that does not know you exist and does not care.

The evening brought me back to Fivizzano town by a different route, past a river beach where local children were swimming and an old man was fishing with a length of bamboo. I had not planned any of it. I had not planned anything, really, since my phone surrendered and my sat nav resigned.

That is the thing about these places. You arrive thinking you will see Tuscany, tick off the experiences, collect the photographs. Instead you find yourself standing in a wheat field at golden hour, having followed a path that petered out into nothing, wondering whether you will ever find your way back to the house with the terrace and the olive groves. You do, of course. Eventually. Usually with better cheese than you started with.

I am writing this on that same terrace, watching the light fade over the valley. Tomorrow I intend to get lost again. I have, I think, finally found the trick of it.