I will never forget the moment I realised I had driven past the Mar Menor Golf Resort three times. There I was, circling the same roundabout near Torre-Pacheco for the better part of twenty minutes, absolutely convinced my sat nav had developed a personal vendetta against me. The third lap was particularly special because I had the windows down, singing along to a Spanish radio station I did not understand, and made direct eye contact with the same bemused cyclist each time. We are basically friends now. I have named him Miguel.

The thing about these resorts is that they are designed to feel like little worlds of their own, tucked among the golf courses and dusty hills of Murcia. What they do not tell you is that finding the entrance requires the navigational instincts of a homing pigeon and the patience of someone waiting for a Ryanair departure. I finally spotted the sign, half-hidden behind an olive tree that had clearly grown with malicious intent since Google last drove through. Victory, at last.

Pulling in, I expected the usual polished reception and that slightly sterile holiday-complex smell of chlorine and optimism. Instead I found something rather more interesting. Having arrived several hours before check-in thanks to my spectacular directional failure, I decided to wander rather than loiter. This is how I discovered the resort's quieter corners, the bits that do not make it onto the brochure photography.

Behind the main pool area, where the sun loungers stand in regimented rows like plastic soldiers, a narrow path veers off toward what I assumed was a service road. It is not. It leads to a small citrus grove, apparently planted years ago and since left to do its own thing. Orange and lemon trees grow in charming disarray, dropping fruit onto a worn bench that looks like it was stolen from a 1970s bus stop. I sat there for an hour with a book I never opened, watching a local cat perform what I can only describe as a dramatic monologue about territory. No other guest passed by. The silence was broken only by distant golf claps and the occasional aircraft heading into Corvera.

That evening, hungry and still slightly disoriented from my earlier circling, I walked toward what I thought was the resort restaurant. I took a wrong turn somewhere near the tennis courts and ended up on a dirt track heading toward the edge of the property. The light was fading into that particular Murcia gold that makes everything look slightly unreal. Rather than retreat, I kept walking, partly stubbornness, partly the pleasant delirium of travel.

The track led to a low wall overlooking a dry ravine. On the other side, someone had built a tiny shrine to the Virgin Mary, decorated with faded plastic flowers and a solar-powered light that flickered with the enthusiasm of a dying torch. Beside it, a rough path descended to what I later learned was an old agricultural water channel, now disused and overgrown with rosemary and wild thyme. I scrambled down, scratched my knee magnificently, and found myself in a hollow where the air hung thick with scent and the last warmth of the day.

I stayed until the stars came out, which does not take long once you are away from the resort lighting. The golf course glowed artificially green in the distance, a strange alien landscape, while around me everything felt older and slower. A fox crossed the channel bed without acknowledging my existence, which I respected.

The next morning, properly checked in and showered, I tried to find my ravine again. I failed, naturally. The resort layout that had seemed so confusing now revealed itself as deceptively simple, and my secret path had vanished into the geometry of pools and pathways. Perhaps I imagined the whole thing. Perhaps the heat and the early start had conjured it.

But I did find the citrus grove again, deliberately this time, and the cat recognised me. We shared a moment of mutual understanding, two creatures who had accidentally discovered something the map did not mention.

That is the trick of these places, I think. You arrive with an itinerary, a sat nav, and a sense of purpose. Then you take a wrong turn, or your technology betrays you, or you simply wander when you should be waiting. The Mar Menor Golf Resort gave me exactly what I had not booked: the particular joy of being slightly lost, of finding corners that exist in the gaps between plans. I still cannot reliably find the entrance, mind you. Miguel would be disappointed if I ever did.