I suppose every decent holiday story ought to begin with a wrong turn, and mine was a proper corker. We'd been driving from Rotterdam, which should have taken roughly two hours, but somehow my phone decided that "fastest route" meant "send this fool through every back lane in North Brabant." Three hours in, with my partner doing that pointed staring out the window thing, I finally admitted we were lost. The admission came right as I reversed into a farm gate to let a tractor pass, which is when I discovered our hire car's reversing sensor had the hysterical temperament of a smoke alarm making toast.

By the time we limped into Afferden, I was ready to kiss the tarmac. And then I couldn't find the cottage at all. The sat nav cheerfully announced we'd arrived whilst we sat outside someone's immaculate bungalow, their curtains twitching with the quiet suspicion that only a small Dutch village can muster. I rang the owner, who explained in perfect English that I'd driven past it twice already. "Look for the big tree," she said. I wanted to mention that Limburg has approximately several million big trees, but I held my tongue.

The cottage itself, when we finally located it, sat down a narrow lane where the hedgerows meet overhead like church arches. I'd booked it in a hurry, seduced by photographs of exposed beams and promises of "authentic character." What the photographs couldn't convey was the smell - that particular damp-stone-and-old-wood perfume that hits you when a building has been standing since before your great-great-grandfather was a twinkle. My partner, who suffers from chronic optimism, declared it "atmospheric." I opened every window and suggested we call it "ventilating."

That first evening, defeated by technology and my own navigational incompetence, we abandoned any plan beyond walking until we found dinner. This is how we discovered that getting properly lost in Limburg is not a bug but the entire feature. We wandered down lanes with no pavement, past fields where Maas-Rijn-IJssel cattle regarded us with the blank patience of creatures who have seen countless idiots with walking apps. The light did that golden thing it does in late afternoon, turning everything slightly magical and forgiving.

We found a cafe in what I later learned was called Molenhoek, though at the time I couldn't have told you our own postcode. The owner spoke no English and my Dutch extends to "alstublieft" and "bier," which turned out to be sufficient vocabulary for survival. We pointed at things, smiled a lot, and ate something involving asparagus that was genuinely extraordinary. I have no idea what it was called. I've tried to find it since and failed, which feels appropriate. Some things ought to remain ungooglable.

The next morning, determined to continue our accidental approach, we set off with no destination and a vague notion of following the Maas river. We found instead a network of footpaths through woodland that felt almost embarrassingly secret, as though we'd stumbled into someone's private dream. The paths weren't marked on any app I could find, which explained why we encountered precisely nobody for two hours. Just birdsong and the occasional startled deer, plus my own wheezing as I discovered that "flat Netherlands" is a vicious lie perpetrated by people who've only visited Amsterdam.

By afternoon we'd emerged somewhere near the village of Heijen, though the exact geography remained pleasantly uncertain. A local bakery, discovered because I smelled it before I saw it, provided bread still warm from the oven and some speculaas that I ate entirely too many of. The woman behind the counter asked if we were walking the Maasdijk. We said yes, because it seemed simpler than explaining our comprehensive lack of plan.

That became our pattern for the week. Deliberate aimlessness. Following curiosity rather than coordinates. We found a tiny chapel in a field, its door unlocked, its interior lit by candles that someone maintains though I never saw who. We found a farm shop selling cheese from the cows we'd walked past, the owner happy to chat in broken English and generous with samples. We found ourselves, more than once, genuinely uncertain where we were, and discovered that this uncertainty carried its own particular joy.

I am not naturally a person who relishes being lost. I like knowing. I like preparation and backup plans and knowing exactly where the nearest petrol station is. But something about that cottage in Afferden, with its creaking stairs and its garden full of blackbirds, loosened something in me. Or perhaps it was Limburg itself, with its unexpected hills and its villages that seem to have arranged themselves specifically to confuse outsiders.

On our final day, we did try one proper tourist activity, driving to the Maasduinen National Park with intention and maps and everything. It was beautiful, certainly, and we enjoyed it well enough. But walking back to the cottage that evening, taking a wrong turn that turned out to be right, we found a small orchard heavy with apples and a view across the valley that stopped us both mid-sentence. No signpost. No entrance fee. No other souls around.

I took a photograph, though it doesn't capture it. Some things don't translate to pixels, which I suppose is the whole point of going in the first place.

We left the next morning, and I managed to get lost again almost immediately, which felt like the place's final gift. By the time we found the motorway, I was almost sorry. Almost.