I thought I'd planned the journey to Wemeldinge rather well, if I'm honest. Satnav programmed, snacks purchased, ferry from Hull to Rotterdam survived with dignity mostly intact. It was all going swimmingly until I reached the outskirts of the village and realised, with that particular sinking feeling, that I'd been confidently following directions to a completely different Wemeldinge somewhere near Groningen. Three hours north. I'd mixed up my satnav favourites from a previous trip, and there I was, forty minutes from the actual cottage, laughing like a drain at my own spectacular competence.

The cottage itself, when I finally found it tucked down a narrow lane on the edge of the village, immediately forgave me. Traditional Zeeland style, that distinctive red-brown brick, and a garden that smelled of sea air and something herbal I couldn't identify. I dumped my bags with the theatrical exhaustion of someone who'd navigated two Wemeldings and decided the only sensible course was to wander without purpose. No map, no plan, just the vague notion of finding the sea.

Getting lost in Wemeldinge proper is rather difficult, mind you. It's not exactly a metropolis. But I managed it within twenty minutes, taking a wrong turn past the marina and ending up on a cycle path that seemed to lead nowhere in particular. The mishap became the making of the afternoon. The path wound through salt marshes where sheep grazed behind ancient dykes, their wool looking almost orange in the late light. I'd stumbled onto a stretch of the Oosterschelde that no brochure had mentioned, a muddy little beach where locals apparently came to dig for cockles. An elderly couple showed me the proper technique, laughing at my enthusiastic incompetence as I sprayed myself with wet sand.

The following morning I deliberately set out to lose myself again. The polder roads around Wemeldinge follow a grid pattern that should be foolproof, yet I found a tiny lane between potato fields that narrowed to barely car width. It led to a farm shop selling nothing but potatoes and homemade apple syrup, run by a woman who insisted I try five varieties before purchasing. I left with more spuds than any reasonable person needs and a jar of something sticky that I'm still finding uses for.

The real discovery came on my third day. I'd cycled towards what I thought was the marina, taken a scenic wrong turn past a modern housing estate, and found myself at the edge of a nature reserve I'd never heard mentioned. The Yerseke Mosselbanken path, apparently, though the sign was so weathered it looked almost unofficial. There I watched oystercatchers working the mudflats while a heron stood motionless, and realised I'd been cycling for an hour without seeing another soul.

That evening, back at the cottage, I cooked those potatoes with some local mussels I'd bought from a shed-honest, a shed-with an honesty box near the harbour. The kitchen looked out over the garden, and beyond it, the flat fields stretching towards the grey line of the sea. I thought about my Groningen Wemeldinge, the confident wrong turn that had started everything, and felt peculiarly grateful. The planned bits of holidays are fine, the museums and the recommended restaurants and the scenic viewpoints. But it's the unplanned wrong turns that actually stay with you, the lanes that narrow to nothing, the farm shops that appear like mirages, the mudflats you never meant to find.

I finished my mussels, slightly sandy from my own enthusiastic washing, and made a resolution I knew I'd probably break: next time, I'd get lost on purpose from the very beginning.