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 just outside Zwolle. There I was, white-knuckling the steering wheel in our hired Vauxhall, convinced I'd somehow offended Dutch technology. The mishap? I'd spent a solid ten minutes reversing down a farm track after confidently ignoring three separate "verboden" signs, only to find myself face-to-face with a very unimpressed-looking goat. The goat, I should add, seemed to judge me far more harshly than any of the locals ever did.

We'd set off from the Eurotunnel with grand plans of a straightforward four-hour jaunt to Rheezerveen, a tiny hamlet in Overijssel that I'd picked precisely because nobody I knew had ever heard of it. The property was one of those traditional Dutch holiday homes with the thatched roof and the lot, the sort of place that looks like it belongs on a biscuit tin. What I hadn't banked on was my own spectacular talent for getting gloriously, wonderfully lost.

The sat nav finally gave up on me somewhere near the village of Punthorst, and rather than panic, I did what any sensible person would do: I pulled over, bought a paper map from a petrol station that smelled strongly of fried snacks, and embraced the chaos. This turned out to be the best decision of the entire trip.

That wrong turn down what I now know is called the Weerribben-Wieden National Park's lesser-trodden edge led us to a tiny canal-side path where an elderly chap was fishing with a patience I envied. He didn't speak English, I don't speak Dutch, but through a magnificent performance of pointing and enthusiastic nodding, he directed us to a hidden pocket of woodland that wasn't on any tourist brochure I'd seen. We spent an hour there, watching herons stand about looking important, and I felt that particular joy that only comes from accidentally finding somewhere that feels like yours alone.

The actual arrival at our Rheezerveen cottage was almost an afterthought by that point, though the thatched roof and the little wooden bridge over the drainage ditch did make me properly grin. The owner had left the key under a terracotta pot that matched the roof tiles exactly, which I found delightfully Dutch in its practicality. But the real magic had already happened in the getting lost.

Over the next few days, we made a sport of it. We'd head out with vague intentions of finding the nearest supermarket and instead stumble upon a family-run cheese farm where the proprietor insisted we try something he called "boerenkaas" that made my eyes water with its strength. We took a wrong turning near Giethoorn and found ourselves on a cycling path that wound through reed beds where the silence was so complete I could hear my own heartbeat. Another accidental detour landed us at a village fete in Blokzijl, where I ate my body weight in poffertjes and watched children in clogs race each other with a seriousness that belied the absurdity.

There's something peculiarly liberating about surrendering to disorientation in a landscape as flat and watery as Overijssel. You can't really get properly lost, not in any dangerous sense. The worst that happens is you end up cycling an extra few kilometres along a dyke, or you find yourself waving apologetically at a farmer whose field you've accidentally photographed. The best that happens is you discover a tiny harbour where someone sells smoked eel from their shed, and you eat it on a bench watching the boats go by, feeling smug about your excellent poor sense of direction.

I think back now to that goat, standing in the middle of the track with what I can only describe as profound scepticism. I was embarrassed then, red-faced and flustered, three-point-turning in a space designed for tractors. But that goat was onto something. It was guarding the threshold to a different kind of holiday, one where the planned route is merely a suggestion and the real memories hide down the lanes that don't appear on your phone.

We never did manage to visit the place I'd originally intended for our first afternoon. I couldn't tell you its name now anyway. What I can tell you is that somewhere between Punthorst and Rheezerveen, there's a bench beside a canal where I sat with a lukewarm coffee from a machine and watched the world narrow down to the ripple of water against a moored boat. I found it because I was lost. I'd have missed it entirely if I'd been found.