I have never been very good at following instructions, which is probably why I ended up in a sheep field three miles from our holiday cottage instead of at the front door. The sat nav had given up on me somewhere near Vidreres, and there I was, bumping along a dirt track in our hire car, convinced I was taking a shortcut. My partner sat in the passenger seat making that face. You know the one. The "I told you to turn left at the roundabout" face. I had indeed missed the roundabout entirely, distracted by a roadside stall selling what turned out to be the most enormous peaches I have ever seen.

We eventually found the cottage by pure accident, spotting a tiny hand-painted sign half-hidden behind an olive tree. The property sat at the end of a gravel drive, all terracotta roof tiles and cream walls, with a swimming pool that caught the afternoon light like someone had spilled a tray of gold coins. I stepped out of the car feeling rather pleased with myself, as if getting lost had been the plan all along. My partner remained unconvinced.

The next morning, determined to redeem myself, I suggested we wander into Vidreres without using our phones. Just a stroll, I said. See what we find. We took a lane that looked promising, passed a bakery where an elderly woman was arranging custard tarts in the window, and kept walking. The lane narrowed, then forked, then forked again. Within twenty minutes I had absolutely no idea where we were. My partner made the face again.

But then we heard water. A proper rushing sound, not the gentle trickle of someone's garden sprinkler. We pushed through some overhanging brambles and found a stream, crystal clear, cutting through a small gorge that nobody seemed to know about. There was no path, no sign, no other people. Just smooth grey rocks and dragonflies and the smell of pine. We sat on a flat stone for an hour, dipping our feet in water so cold it made us gasp, and I felt that particular joy that only comes from accidental discovery. The map would have sent us to the beach, twenty minutes away by car. Instead we got this secret corner, all because I cannot read a map.

The following days became a game of deliberate wrong turns. We found a vineyard where the owner, a man called Pere with eyebrows like caterpillars, poured us glasses of young red wine and refused payment. We stumbled upon a ruined chapel in the woods, its stone walls covered in moss, where someone had left fresh wildflowers in a cracked vase. We discovered a village bakery that only opened on Thursdays, selling bread from a wood-fired oven that had been burning since 1967, according to the baker, though I suspect he may have been pulling my leg.

Each evening we returned to our cottage sunburnt and triumphant, carrying bags of cherries or bottles of local vermouth. The swimming pool became our reward for successful incompetence. I would float on my back, staring at the stars, and reflect on how much of my life I have spent trying to be efficient, organised, on time. Here, being rubbish at navigation had become a kind of superpower. My partner even stopped making the face, though perhaps that was the vermouth.

On our final morning, I tried to find that stream again. Took every wrong turn on purpose, walked twice the distance, ended up in a completely different gorge with a waterfall I had never seen before. Some people are born lucky, I suppose. Or perhaps, as I am beginning to understand, there is no such thing as lost if you are not in a particular hurry to be found.