I have never been brilliant with sat navs, so it will surprise no one that I took a wrong turn somewhere past Santiago de Compostela and ended up down a single-track lane that seemed to be arguing with itself about which direction to go. The hedgerows were so high I could barely see the sky, and my phone had given up entirely, flashing a little sad face before dying completely. There I was, in rural Galicia, with nothing but a half-eaten packet of Hula Hoops and a growing suspicion that I had just driven into someone's driveway for the third time.

The thing about getting properly lost, though, is that you start noticing things. A stone cross I would have missed at sixty miles an hour. An old woman in a headscarf feeding chickens. The smell of eucalyptus that hits you suddenly, sweet and medicinal, from groves you never planned to find. I wound down the window and just followed my nose, which is how I stumbled upon a tiny village bar where an ancient chap with hands like twisted roots poured me a coffee and drew me a map on the back of a lottery ticket. He spoke no English, I speak barely any Galician, but we managed through pointing and enthusiastic noises. His map led me, eventually, to the turning for Ramon Cabanillas, though I suspect he threw in a detour past his cousin's house just for the entertainment value.

The property sits in that particular Galician landscape of rolling green and sudden granite, where the weather seems to hold several opinions at once. I arrived with my hair looking like I had been electrocuted by the Atlantic breeze and my car plastered with enough mud to suggest I had been rally driving. The key was exactly where promised, and I spent a solid ten minutes just standing in the garden with my bags still in the car, listening to absolutely nothing much at all. Somewhere distant, a dog barked. A buzzard circled. I felt the particular smugness of someone who has accidentally found something rather good.

That first evening, I went wandering with no particular plan, which is always when the magic happens. A path behind the house led through oak woods and emerged at a stream where someone had long ago built a stone washing area, now abandoned and mossy, with ferns growing from every crack. I sat there until the midges found me, imagining the women who must have gathered there decades past, gossiping through their laundry. Further on, I found a collapsed stone cottage almost swallowed by brambles, a rusted plough visible through the doorway like a museum piece someone forgot to curate.

The village proper, when I found it, was barely a handful of houses and a church that looked permanently surprised to see visitors. I bought bread from a shop that also sold nails and fishing line, and the woman seemed delighted by my terrible attempts at Spanish, correcting my pronunciation with the patience of someone who has plenty of time. She told me, I think, about a beach nearby that the locals use, though I only caught every third word and may have agreed to something I did not understand.

By the time I found my way back, the light was doing that extraordinary Galician thing where everything turns gold and then suddenly grey, as if someone is flicking through filters on a phone. I made tea with the funny little electric hob, ate my bread and cheese, and watched the darkness come on properly for the first time in months, without streetlights or neighbours or any sound except an owl that sounded frankly unwell.

I had not planned any of this. The wrong turn, the lottery ticket map, the abandoned washing stones, the unwell owl. That is the trick of it, I think. You set out for somewhere specific and find, instead, somewhere that feels briefly like yours alone. I still have that map, pressed into my guidebook, the biro smudged where rain got to it. I cannot read a word of it now, but I know exactly where it led.