I have always believed that the best holidays are the ones where you accidentally take a wrong turn and find something brilliant. My recent trip to Kashubia in northern Poland proved this theory in spectacular fashion, beginning with a satnav mishap that still makes me wince.

The journey from Gdansk Airport started well enough. I had hired a sensible Skoda, stocked up on road snacks, and felt rather smug about my planning. The satnav confidently directed me toward Kartuzy, and I cruised along thinking myself terribly organised. Then, somewhere near the village of Sierakowice, I missed a turning. Rather than admitting defeat immediately, I decided to "explore" - which is travel writer code for getting hopelessly lost.

The tarmac gave way to a gravel track, which became a dirt path, which eventually deposited me in front of a farmyard where an elderly gentleman was feeding chickens. He looked at my car, looked at me, and said something rapid in Kashubian that I absolutely did not understand. Polish I can manage, after a fashion. Kashubian, this region's distinct language, might as well be Martian. I smiled, shrugged, and made what I hoped were apologetic noises. He laughed, pointed vaguely eastward, and returned to his chickens. I took this as encouragement.

What followed was forty-five minutes of glorious, unplanned wandering through countryside that felt increasingly like stepping into a storybook. I passed wooden houses painted in deep greens and burgundies, their gardens overflowing with hollyhocks and sunflowers. I crossed a bridge over a stream so perfectly picturesque I initially suspected I had hallucinated it from motorway monotony. Somewhere near the village of Somonino, I found a tiny chapel with a crooked spire, its door unlocked, its interior smelling of beeswax and old wood. I sat there for ten minutes, the only visitor, listening to nothing but birdsong and my own breathing. It was the first moment of genuine peace I had experienced in months.

By the time I stumbled upon the actual road to Kartuzy, I had collected enough accidental discoveries to fill a fortnight. A roadside stall selling smoked fish caught that morning from nearby lakes. A grandmother selling jars of cloudberry jam, her prices written on cardboard in shaky handwriting. A clearing in a birch wood where someone had placed a single wooden bench facing absolutely nothing in particular, as if inviting strangers to sit and contemplate their terrible navigation skills.

The holiday property itself, when I finally arrived two hours late and slightly muddy, felt almost anticlimactic by comparison. A comfortable wooden house with a proper Kashubian feel, all exposed beams and practical furnishings. Lovely, certainly, but I was still thinking about that chapel, that bench, that stream.

Over the following days, I deliberately abandoned any plan more ambitious than "drive somewhere and see what happens." I found a lakeside spot where locals swim, completely unmarked on any tourist map, where teenagers showed me the proper technique for jumping from a rickety wooden pier. I discovered a bakery in what appeared to be someone's front room, selling pierogi that ruined all other pierogi for me permanently. I got lost again near Lake Klasztorne and found a walking trail maintained by nobody in particular, winding through pine forest to a viewpoint I had entirely to myself.

The thing about getting lost in Kashubia is that you are never truly lost. The region is too friendly, too compact, too genuinely welcoming for that. Every wrong turn became a conversation, every dead end a discovery. I began to trust the process, setting out each morning with only the vaguest direction and a full tank of petrol.

On my final day, I attempted to find that first farmyard again, hoping to thank the chicken man properly with a bottle of vodka. I failed, naturally. Got lost in completely different directions, found a completely different farm, had a completely similar conversation with a completely different elderly gentleman and his completely different chickens. It was perfect.

I returned home with no proper photographs of famous landmarks, no checked-off sightseeing lists, no stories of efficient travel. Instead I had jam-stained fingers, a slight sunburn from that bench in the birch wood, and the certain knowledge that my satnav is fundamentally untrustworthy. I would not change a single wrong turn.