Getting to Can Petit Estel in Betlem was meant to be straightforward. I had printed directions, which already marks me out as hopelessly old-fashioned, and had even downloaded an offline map as backup. What I had not accounted for was my own spectacular talent for missing obvious turnings while arguing with a hire car sat nav that insisted on pronouncing every Spanish name as though it were aggressively Welsh.

The mishap came just past Arta. A roundabout that I absolutely should have taken, except I was busy celebrating my own cleverness at having navigated the Palma ring road without incident. By the time I realised, I was committed to a winding lane that grew progressively narrower and more agricultural. Sheep looked at me with the weary disappointment of creatures who have seen many such idiots. The lane ended at a farm gate where a very patient man, without a word of shared language, managed to convey through gestures alone that I needed to reverse approximately half a mile to somewhere wider than a wheelbarrow. I did so in a state of crimson-faced humility, my companion helpfully filming the whole performance on her phone for posterity.

This wrong turn, though, became the making of the holiday. Having finally found the proper road to Betlem, I arrived at Can Petit Estel in a state of slightly giddy relief, and promptly fell in love with the place before I had even opened my suitcase. The villa sits in that blissful middle ground of being properly secluded without requiring a machete and emergency rations. Terracotta terraces step down through gardens that smell of jasmine and warm stone, and the pool catches the morning sun in a way that makes you forgive every reversing error you have ever committed.

But it was the getting lost that set the tone. The next morning, determined to explore on foot rather than risk the car again, we set off without much plan beyond "head vaguely towards the coast." Betlem itself is tiny, a scattering of houses and a chapel, and within ten minutes we had wandered past its edges and onto a track that seemed to belong more to goats than humans. The map on my phone showed nothing. We pressed on anyway, partly from stubbornness, partly because the alternative was admitting I had led us astray again.

The track delivered us to a cove I still cannot properly name. Small, shingle-bottomed, completely empty on a Tuesday in late May. The water was that impossible turquoise that photographs never quite capture, and the only sound was a fisherman in a tiny boat who waved once and otherwise left us to our private discovery. We had not brought swimming things, naturally, because who packs for an accidental cove? We paddled like children, trousers rolled, and felt absurdly pleased with ourselves.

That became our method for the week. Deliberate wandering with no destination. A lane north of Betlem brought us to an olive grove where an elderly couple were pressing oil the old way, and somehow communicated through smiles and gestures that we should try some on bread still warm from their kitchen. Another afternoon, trying to find a marked walking route and failing comprehensively, we stumbled into a valley where wild rosemary grew in thick bushes and the only building was a ruined finca being slowly reclaimed by fig trees.

The villa itself encouraged this approach. Can Petit Estel has that rare quality of feeling settled into its landscape rather than imposed upon it. Evenings meant cooking with local tomatoes that actually tasted of something, drinking wine on the terrace as the light faded over the hills, and planning tomorrow's purposeful lack of plan. We never did find the official coastal path. I suspect we found something better instead.

On our final morning, I attempted the drive to Arta market and missed the same roundabout in the opposite direction. This time I laughed rather than cursed, followed the lane to see where it went, and discovered a bakery in a village not on any tourist route, where I bought ensaimadas still warm from the oven. Some people have a gift for navigation. I seem to have developed, entirely by accident, a gift for the opposite, and I am no longer sure it is the lesser talent.