I have never been a natural navigator. Give me a phone with full battery and I will still find a way to second-guess the sat nav. So when my partner suggested we drive to Friesland for a long weekend at a cottage in Tzummarum, I felt quietly confident. How lost can you get in the north of the Netherlands? Famous last words, as they say.

The journey up from the ferry at Hook of Holland had actually gone swimmingly. Flat fields, big skies, the odd sheep looking thoroughly unimpressed by our little hire car. Then, somewhere between Franeker and our destination, I decided the sat nav was "taking the boring route." I spotted a smaller road running parallel to a canal, all dappled shade and promise of adventure. I turned. My partner gave me that look.

Within ten minutes the road had narrowed to something a bicycle would find generous. Within fifteen, we were crawling past a farmhouse where a dog the size of a small pony regarded us with what I can only describe as professional disappointment. The road ended in a grassy track. I performed a seventeen-point turn while my partner read the cottage instructions aloud with studied calm.

We arrived at our Tzummarum cottage half an hour late, slightly sweaty, and in my case thoroughly sheepish. But stepping out of the car, the whole ridiculous detour suddenly felt worth it. The place sat at the edge of a tiny village, all proper brick and a roofline that looked like it had been there since before maps were invented. The owner had left the key in a flowerpot, which felt thrillingly informal, and a note wishing us luck with the coffee machine. Reader, we needed it.

That first evening, still recovering from my navigational pride, we went for what was meant to be a short walk to settle our legs. Tzummarum itself is not large. You can stand in the middle and see where the village ends in every direction. But we took a wrong turning almost immediately, mistaking a footpath for the road back, and found ourselves walking along a canal bank as the light went golden. A heron watched us pass with the patience of someone who has seen many lost tourists. We stumbled upon a tiny marina where three men sat outside a wooden hut, drinking beer and discussing something in Frisian with great intensity. They nodded at us without surprise, as if wrong-footed walkers were a daily entertainment.

The next morning, determined to redeem myself, I studied a paper map over breakfast. The cottage had a little garden with a bench facing west, and I sat there with my coffee planning a proper circular walk. We would see the church at Tzummarum, then cut across to the neighbouring village. Efficient. Organised. Foolproof.

We found the church easily enough, a handsome tower visible for miles across the flat land. Then I spotted an unmarked path running behind it, curving away between hedgerows. It looked unofficial. It looked interesting. My partner sighed in a way that suggested this was becoming a theme.

That path led us to a small lake we could not find on any map, where someone had built a rough wooden jetty and left a rowing boat tied up. No sign, no fence, no indication of who it belonged to. We sat on the jetty and ate the cheese sandwiches we had packed, and a kingfisher darted past so close I could have touched it. We never did work out whose lake it was. I prefer not knowing.

By day three I had abandoned any pretence of purposeful exploration. We set out each morning with water and snacks and no particular destination, and each time found something we were not looking for. A bakery in what appeared to be someone's front room, selling bread still warm and speaking enough English to laugh at my attempts to pronounce "sukerbole." A field of horses with foals so newly born they still had that uncertain, long-legged wobble. A bench by a drainage ditch, perfectly positioned for watching the sunset, with a plaque commemorating someone's grandmother and her love of this exact view.

The thing about Friesland, I came to realise, is that the beaten track is already fairly quiet. The roads are narrow, the villages small, the landscape so consistently flat that every little rise feels like an event. Getting lost here is not dramatic. You are never truly far from somewhere. But the places you find by accident have a different quality to the ones you seek out on purpose. They come without expectation. They just are.

On our final morning I tried to retrace our steps to that unmarked lake, to show my partner I could navigate when I put my mind to it. We walked for an hour. We found a different lake, equally unmarked, equally peaceful. I have no idea if it was the same one. I stopped trying to work it out.

Driving away, back towards the main roads and the ferry home, I felt something I rarely do after a holiday. Not the satisfaction of sights ticked off a list, but the quieter pleasure of having wandered without aim and been rewarded for it. My partner drove. I navigated, phone firmly in my pocket, watching the fields roll by and wondering where that narrow road might lead. I did not suggest we find out. But I thought about it.