I have never been particularly gifted at reading maps, which is how I found myself reversing down a farm track near Scherpenisse with a very cross-looking goose giving me what I can only describe as the Dutch equivalent of a telling-off. My partner sat in the passenger seat, arms folded, saying "I did mention the second turning" in that particular tone that manages to be both supportive and deeply accusatory.

We were bound for a converted farmhouse in the polder country of Zeeland, that strange, flat corner of the Netherlands where the land feels borrowed from the sea and nobody takes verticality for granted. The sat-nav had given up somewhere past Middelburg, apparently offended by the sheer horizontality of the landscape. I had insisted we press on, certain that intuition would guide us. It did not. The goose knew it. I knew it. Only my partner remained diplomatically silent.

The farmhouse revealed itself eventually, tucked behind a windbreak of poplars with a red-tiled roof that seemed to glow in the late afternoon light. Our host, a wiry man named Henk who spoke English with the clipped precision of someone who learned it from wartime radio broadcasts, emerged from a barn carrying a wheelbarrow full of something vegetably unidentifiable. He did not seem surprised to see us. I suspect guests arriving flustered and forty minutes late is standard procedure.

The interior was not the rustic fantasy I had feared. No clogs on walls, no artificial cosiness. Instead, exposed beams that had genuinely held up ceilings for two centuries, a kitchen with a proper range, and windows that framed the polder like paintings that changed with the light. I stood at the sink washing coffee cups the next morning and watched a heron stand motionless in a drainage ditch for what felt like an hour. It caught nothing while I watched. I admired its patience, then questioned my own life choices.

We had planned excursions to Veere, to the Delta Works, to anywhere with a car park and a TripAdvisor presence. We accomplished none of these. On the second morning, determined to find a bakery without Henk's directions, we took a wrong turn at a junction marked only by a leaning signpost and found ourselves on a narrow dyke between two water channels, cycling into a headwind that felt personally motivated.

The bakery was never located. Instead we discovered a small harbour where a man in overalls was repairing a net, surrounded by cats who appeared to be his unpaid consultants. He sold us smoked eel from a shed, wrapped in paper that immediately became transparent with fish oil. We ate it on a bench, fighting the wind for every bite, and it remains among the finest meals I have ever had.

That wrong turn became our methodology. We abandoned the guidebook, such as it was, and simply chose directions that felt incorrect. A path through reeds led to a hide where an elderly woman with binoculars explained, without being asked, the migratory patterns of godwits. A lane ending at a dead sign brought us to a farm selling the most extraordinary cheese, made by a granddaughter who had returned from Amsterdam to take over the operation. She spoke of soil bacteria with the fervour others reserve for football.

On our final evening, lost again by design, we watched the sun set over the Western Scheldt from a spot I could not now relocate if my life depended on it. The water became bronze, then violet, then something without a name. My partner, who had navigated us to this nameless place by refusing to consult any map, leaned against my shoulder. The goose, presumably, had long since forgiven me. I had forgiven myself for not being the sort of person who takes correct turnings. Some people find their way by not finding it at all.