I have always believed that the best holidays are the ones where you accidentally take a wrong turn and end up somewhere brilliant. My recent trip to Santa Susanna in Catalonia proved this theory beyond any doubt, though the journey there very nearly ended in disaster before it had even begun.

We had flown into Barcelona and hired a car, which felt terribly sophisticated until I realised I had absolutely no idea how to operate a Spanish petrol pump. Cue ten minutes of me jabbing buttons like a confused pensioner at a cash machine while a queue of impatient locals formed behind me. My partner, ever the optimist, suggested I was "building character." I suggested he could build some character himself by helping rather than filming the ordeal for posterity.

The mishap that truly defined our arrival, however, came twenty minutes from Santa Susanna. Relying on my phone's GPS, I took what I confidently announced was a "scenic shortcut" through the hills behind the coast. The tarmac soon gave way to something resembling a goat track. Our little hire car developed a concerning rattle. My partner's eyebrows climbed steadily towards his hairline. And then, rounding a bend far too enthusiastically, I clipped a stone wall and sheared off the passenger wing mirror clean as you like. It sailed into a ditch with a theatrical clatter that echoed off the hillsides.

We sat in stunned silence. A goat observed us with what I can only describe as professional disinterest.

"Well," my partner said eventually, "at least we've got a story."

What happened next transformed the entire trip. Too mortified to continue immediately, we pulled over near a tiny hamlet that barely warranted a name on any map. I needed to compose myself, and frankly, to work out how to explain the mirror to the hire company. We wandered down a narrow lane between stone houses, following the sound of running water, and stumbled upon the most extraordinary little spot: a natural spring bubbling from the rock face, with a stone basin carved centuries ago by some long-forgotten hand. Local women had once done their washing here, judging by the worn grooves in the stone. No signposts pointed to it. No guidebook mentioned it. We sat on the warm rock for half an hour, sharing a warm bottle of water from the car, and something shifted. The mirror seemed less catastrophic. The afternoon light filtered through pine trees in that particular golden way that only happens in Mediterranean hills.

We eventually found our way to the Santa Susanna property, a lovely place with a terrace overlooking towards the coast, and spent the week deliberately getting lost. Each morning we'd set out with vague intentions and terrible navigation skills. One afternoon, wandering down an unmarked path from the main beach, we discovered a cove where local fishermen still mended nets in the traditional way, their wooden boats pulled up on shingle. Another wrong turn led us to a family-run restaurant in what appeared to be someone's front room, where we ate the finest paella of our lives for embarrassingly little money.

The owner spoke no English and our Catalan was nonexistent, but through elaborate pointing and enthusiastic gestures, we communicated perfectly well. He brought us wine from his brother's vineyard, unlabelled and poured from a plastic jug, and it was magnificent.

I think about that sheared-off mirror now with genuine affection. Without it, we would have arrived efficiently, settled onto our terrace, and likely stayed there. Instead, we found a Catalonia that exists between the proper roads and the official attractions: ancient springs, hidden coves, front-room restaurants, and conversations conducted entirely in smiles and raised glasses. Getting lost, it turns out, is simply another way of finding something worth keeping.