I have never been so relieved to see a red wooden house in all my life. After three hours of driving from Kalmar, my partner and I had managed to miss the turning for Loettorp not once but twice, thanks to my stubborn refusal to use the sat nav properly. "I know where I'm going," I'd said, waving my phone about like a compass. Reader, I did not know where I was going.

The final wrong turn deposited us down a narrow gravel track flanked by hawthorn bushes, where we promptly got the hire car stuck in a soft verge. There we sat, two Brits in a Vauxhall, surrounded by nothing but fields and the faint smell of the sea somewhere in the distance. My partner gave me that look. You know the one. The look that says "I love you but also you are an absolute pillock."

What happened next saved the entire holiday. While I was contemplating the walk of shame back to the main road, an elderly chap on a bicycle appeared from absolutely nowhere. He didn't speak a word of English, and my Swedish extends to "tack" and "skol," but through a magnificent pantomime of gestures and pointing, he helped us push the car back onto firmer ground. Then, rather than sending us back the way we'd come, he gestured down the track with great enthusiasm. We followed his directions purely because it seemed rude not to.

That track led us to a tiny cove I cannot find on any map. The beach was no more than fifty metres of shingle, sheltered by low limestone cliffs, with the water so clear you could see the weed swaying on the bottom. A single weathered bench faced the sea, positioned by someone who clearly understood the value of doing absolutely nothing in a beautiful place. We sat there for an hour, eating the emergency packet of biscuits we'd bought at the airport, and I felt something shift in my chest. The panic of being lost dissolved into something else entirely. The relief of it, the accidental perfection.

We did eventually find the cottage, of course. The key was exactly where the instructions said, in a little wooden box by the door. But that first evening, rather than settling in properly, we walked straight back out again, determined to get deliberately lost this time. We wandered down lanes with no names, past fields of oats and barley that rippled like water in the evening breeze. Somewhere near the coast we stumbled upon a tiny farm shop, unsigned, unmanned, with an honesty box for the eggs and new potatoes. We bought both, plus a jar of cloudberry jam that I am still rationing months later.

The cottage itself was everything we needed after that first chaotic afternoon. Traditional red paint, white trim, the proper Swedish deal. A small deck where we sat with our stolen supper, watching the light change over the fields. But I won't pretend the accommodation was the star of that trip. The star was the getting lost, the accidental discoveries, the realisation that my spectacular navigational failure had handed us something no amount of planning could have managed.

On our final morning, we tried to find that cove again. Failed completely, despite an hour of searching. My partner found this hilarious. I found it perfect. Some places, it seems, only reveal themselves when you have absolutely no idea where you are.