I should have known the Sat Nav was up to no good when it tried to send me through what looked like someone's allotment. There I was, proudly navigating the winding roads of Masuria in our hire car, feeling terribly continental with a packet of Polish crisps in the cup holder, when the robotic voice announced we had reached our destination. We had not. We had reached a shed with a goat in it. The goat looked as surprised as I did.

This is how I ended up properly lost in the Polish Lake District, and honestly, it turned out to be the best thing that happened all week.

We were meant to be finding our way to a holiday home near Gizycko, one of those charming Masurian towns where the lakes outnumber the people and every other building seems to sell smoked fish. The property itself, when we eventually found it, sat tucked among pine trees with a view of the water that made the goat detour feel like fate rather than technology failing us. But I am getting ahead of myself, because those first hours of glorious, unplanned wandering became the template for everything wonderful about the trip.

With the Sat Nav sulkily recalculating in the passenger seat, we simply drove until something looked interesting. That something turned out to be a tiny village called Wilkasy, not far from where we were meant to be, where an elderly gentleman was selling honey from his garden table. No shop, no sign, just a table and a tremendous beard. Through a mixture of pointing, smiling, and my shameful attempt at Polish that sounded more like sneezing, we acquired a jar of buckwheat honey and directions that involved several gestures toward trees. We followed his pointing, because what else do you do?

The track led to a clearing where someone had built a wooden pier into a lake so small it does not appear to merit a name. We sat there for an hour, watching dragonflies conduct their complicated business, and I had one of those moments of gentle self-reflection that holidays sometimes permit. I am terrible at letting things happen. I plan, I research, I read reviews of restaurants seventeen miles away while ignoring what is directly in front of me. Getting lost had stripped all that away, and I was suddenly content with a pier, some honey, and no idea what time it was.

We found more by accident than design over the following days. A bakery in Gizycko proper, down a side street that smelled of yeast and ambition, where the woman behind the counter insisted we try something called drozdzowka warm from the oven. A beach on Lake Niegocin that we stumbled upon after taking a wrong turn looking for a cash machine, where local families were swimming and someone had left a rope swing hanging from an oak tree. I am forty-three and I used that swing, and I have no regrets.

The holiday home itself became our base for deliberate getting-lost. Each morning we would pick a direction, disable the Sat Nav with the firmness it deserved, and see where the lanes took us. One afternoon we found ourselves at a marina so quiet we could hear the halyards pinging against masts. Another time we discovered a forest clearing where mushrooms were being gathered by women in wellingtons who looked like they had been doing this since childhood, which they probably had.

By the end of the week, I had stopped checking my phone for recommended attractions. The mishap with the goat had taught me something valuable: in Masuria, the best experiences are not in the guidebooks. They are down tracks that look too narrow for cars, at tables with bearded honey-sellers, on nameless lakes where the only sound is your own slightly nervous laughter as you swing out over the water.

We did eventually reach our property, of course, and it was lovely. But I will always be grateful to that confused goat for setting the tone. Some holidays you plan. Others, you simply allow to happen.