I should have known the sat nav was up to no good when it tried to send me through what looked like someone's back garden. There I was, halfway up a narrow lane outside Vlagtwedde, convinced I was pioneering a new route to Groningen, when a very patient Dutch cyclist pointed out I'd missed the proper turning about two miles back. Classic me. I'd been so smug about "taking the scenic route" that I'd actually just taken the wrong route.

Still, that wrong turn turned out to be the making of the whole trip.

By the time I finally rolled up to the holiday home, slightly frazzled and definitely in need of a cuppa, I was already half in love with the place without even seeing it properly. The flat landscape of eastern Groningen has a way of sneaking up on you. At first you think it's just fields, just sky, just endless horizon. Then you start noticing things. The way the light pools in the drainage ditches. The sudden clatter of a wind pump you hadn't spotted against the grey sky. The absolute, glorious nothingness that somehow feels completely full.

The property itself was one of those traditional longhouses, all red brick and sensible Dutch proportions. I dumped my bags with the enthusiasm of someone who'd been driving in circles for the best part of an hour and immediately went for a wander. This, I should mention, is where my holiday strategy of "let's just see what's down here" properly kicked in.

I had no plan. No list. Just a pair of decent walking boots and a complete inability to follow directions.

Within ten minutes of leaving the house, I was properly lost. Not worried-lost, more pleasantly-disorientated-lost. I found myself on a little embankment path between two fields, the kind of thing that doesn't appear on any tourist map and probably hasn't changed since someone first thought "we should probably drain this bit." The grass was damp, my jeans were getting soaked at the cuffs, and I couldn't have been happier.

That's when I spotted the bird hide. Just sitting there, completely unmarked, looking like a garden shed that had gone feral. I crept inside like I was trespassing on some great secret, which I suppose I was. The notebook inside was full of other people's sightings: bitterns, marsh harriers, something called a "penduline tit" that I still can't say without smirking. I sat there for twenty minutes watching absolutely nothing in particular, and it was genuinely one of the best afternoons I've had in years.

The next morning I went wrong on purpose. Took a left where I should have gone right, followed a sign to somewhere called Sellingen that I'd never heard of, and ended up at a tiny marina on the Pekel Aa river. Not a fancy marina with yachts and gin palaces. A proper working one, with one bloke mending nets and a cat asleep on a plastic chair. He sold me a coffee from a machine that probably predated me, and we had one of those conversations where neither of us quite understood the other but we both thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

I found a bakery in Bourtange by similar accident, the old fortified village just up the road. I'd meant to visit the star fort properly, got distracted by the smell of fresh bread, and spent twenty minutes trying to order something I couldn't pronounce while a queue of very polite locals pretended not to notice my struggle. The pastry was still warm. I ate it leaning against the old ramparts, watching a heron work its way along the moat like it was doing the shopping.

The thing about Vlagtwedde and this corner of Groningen generally is that it doesn't perform for you. There's no grand reveal, no iconic view you've seen on a thousand postcards. What it offers instead is the chance to get things wrong and be rewarded for it. Every dead end I stumbled down seemed to have something waiting: a particular quality of silence, a sudden view across the peatlands, a conversation I wouldn't have had if I'd been where I meant to be.

By the end of the week, my phone's map history looked like a toddler's scribble. I'd cycled to Germany without particularly meaning to, got caught in a shower and sheltered in a bus stop that turned out to be someone's lovingly restored vintage shelter complete with original timetable from 1978. I'd found a tiny museum in someone's front room, open on Saturdays only, where a man showed me his collection of agricultural tools and I genuinely found it fascinating.

I never did manage to follow the proper walking route I'd printed out before leaving home. It stayed in my bag, pristine and ignored, while I accumulated mud on my boots and stories I couldn't have planned if I'd tried.

The sat nav mishap on arrival set the tone perfectly, really. This was a holiday about surrendering control, about trusting that the wrong way might be the right way after all. I came back with damp feet, a slightly sunburned nose, and absolutely no idea how to explain to anyone why getting lost in flat countryside near the German border was so completely brilliant.

But it was. It absolutely was.