I have always believed that the best holidays begin with something going slightly wrong, and our trip to Nyehusen in Skane proved me absolutely right. We had been driving up from Malmo, full of that smug energy you get when you think you have beaten the GPS, when I confidently turned down what I insisted was a shortcut. It was not a shortcut. It was a farm track that ended in a field of sugar beet and one very unimpressed-looking horse. My partner gave me that look. You know the one. The look that says, "I love you, but I am never letting you navigate again."

By the time we actually found the holiday home, we were forty minutes late, slightly rattled, and in desperate need of a cup of tea. But the moment we stepped out of the car, something shifted. The house sat there like a well-kept secret, all traditional Swedish timber and quiet confidence, with the sort of garden that makes you want to sit down and do absolutely nothing for several hours. The air smelled of pine and something else I could not place. Salt, maybe. The sea was closer than I had realised.

Here is the thing about getting properly lost, though. It opens you up to accidents. Happy ones, mostly. The next morning, still sulking slightly from my navigational humiliation, I went for what was meant to be a quick walk to clear my head. I took a left where I should have taken a right, or possibly the other way around, and found myself on a narrow path through low scrubland that I would never have noticed otherwise. Ten minutes later I stumbled onto a tiny cove, barely twenty metres of pebbles and clear water, with not another soul in sight. I sat on a rock and watched two oystercatchers arguing about something. I still do not know what. I did not care. I had not brought my phone, or a book, or anything useful. Just myself and the realisation that I am terrible at directions but occasionally brilliant at discovering things I was never looking for.

That set the pattern for the whole week. We stopped trying to plan anything properly, which for a control enthusiast like myself was both liberating and faintly terrifying. We found a bakery in a village I cannot name because I never worked out where we were, selling cardamom buns that ruined all other cardamom buns forever. We cycled down lanes that petered out into nothing, then pushed the bikes through meadows to find medieval churchyards where the grass grew wild and the stones leaned at comfortable angles. One evening we followed what looked like a public footpath and ended up at a small lake where someone had left a wooden rowing boat, apparently for anyone to use. We used it. Badly. My partner rowed in circles for twenty minutes while I laughed until my ribs hurt. A heron watched us with professional disdain.

The house itself became part of this accidental philosophy. We had booked it for the traditional Swedish charm, the proper kitchen, the promise of long evenings cooking and talking. We did some of that. But we also spent hours simply sitting in the garden watching the light change, or walking to the nearby coast without any real purpose, finding new hollows in the dunes each time. One afternoon I fell asleep in a hammock I had not noticed until that morning. I woke up with a crick in my neck and absolutely no regrets.

I think what stayed with me, more than any particular sight or meal, was the feeling of being gently untethered. Skane is not dramatic. It does not shout for your attention. It rewards the wanderer, the person who takes the wrong turn and does not panic. By the end of the week I was actively seeking wrong turns, which is probably a metaphor for something but I am too relaxed to work out what.

On our final morning I got lost one last time, deliberately this time, and found a small hill with a view across fields to the sea. I stood there for a while, thinking about how I had arrived annoyed and beet-stained, and how I was leaving with sand in my shoes and no idea where half my discoveries actually were. It felt like the right way to say goodbye. Some places you plan. Others you simply stumble into, and they stay with you longer than they have any right to.