I had convinced myself that driving through Slovenia would be a doddle. Sat nav, right hand side of the road, how hard could it be? Three hours after leaving Ljubljana airport, I found myself down a farm track near Sezana, staring at a very confused goat and wondering why my phone thought I was still in Italy. Turns out I had typed "Stanjel" into Google Maps and selected the wrong one entirely. The goat seemed to judge me. Fair enough.

By the time I actually found the proper turning for the village, the sun had begun its slow descent over the Karst plateau, and I was in that peculiar state of mild hysteria that comes from being gloriously, unapologetically lost. But then I crested the final hill, and there it was. Stanjel proper, perched on its limestone outcrop like something from a storybook, the Ferrari Garden spilling down the slope in a tumble of cypress and Mediterranean planting. I forgot about the goat. I even forgot about my throbbing left arm from all that unnecessary clutch work on winding lanes.

The house itself sat just below the old village walls, a renovated stone building that managed to look both substantial and somehow tucked into the landscape, as if it had grown there rather than been built. My host had left the key in a flowerpot, which in Britain would have me writing strongly worded letters to the council, but here felt perfectly sensible. The door opened with that satisfying weight that old wooden doors have, and I stepped into coolness and the faint smell of stone and lavender.

I had planned to unpack properly, make a cup of tea, perhaps consult a guidebook about sensible sightseeing. Instead, I found myself wandering straight back out, drawn by the silence and the quality of the evening light. The village above was practically empty of tourists by this hour, and I pottered about the narrow streets like a trespasser in a private museum. A cat led me to a viewpoint I would never have found otherwise, a cracked stone bench where someone had clearly spent decades watching the Vipava Valley turn gold and purple. I sat there until the mosquitoes found me, feeling pleasantly pointless.

The next morning, still operating on no particular plan, I took what I thought was a path to the village well and ended up on a marked trail heading east. The Karst is riddled with these walking routes, limestone paths that thread through vineyards and disappear into sudden hollows. I followed one down into a depression I later learned was a collapsed doline, the bottom cool and damp and full of ferns that had no business growing in this otherwise sun-baked landscape. A wooden bench sat there, rotting slightly, clearly placed by someone who understood the value of accidental discovery.

By day three, I had abandoned any pretence of purposeful tourism. I drove to Sezana town for supplies, took a wrong exit, and found myself at a tiny winery where an elderly woman poured me Teran from her garage and explained, mostly through gestures, that her grandfather had planted the vines. I understood perhaps one word in ten, but we managed a perfectly coherent conversation about rainfall and stubbornness.

That became the rhythm. Morning coffee on the terrace, watching swallows trace impossible geometry. Then walking with no destination, or driving with only the loosest intention, letting the karstic landscape of stone walls and red soil guide me. I found a freshwater spring where locals filled plastic bottles, a chapel with a door that opened onto nothing but nettles and a view, a bench carved into a sinkhole where someone had clearly spent serious time contemplating the absurdity of limestone geology.

The mishap of my arrival never really stopped, in a sense. I remained gloriously, happily misplaced for the entire week. The goat, I suspect, would still not approve. But I cannot remember a holiday where being lost felt so much like being found.