It's kinda wierd being a grandparent now. I'm all keen to go away to Europe next year (and possibly Africa, but at the very least Morrocco) but I have this beloved creature that I don't really want to leave. Still, part of what defines my husband and I is our adventurous spirit, and he is homesick for the northern part of the world, as am I, if I'm honest.

Part of that is a desire to get lost, at least from the life we are living now. He's bored of his job and since he's the primary bread winner that's a big weight on his shoulders and a heaviness he has to cope with every day. So we're busy saving and looking forward to leaving for a while. What that means for the house, where we live next, and what we do for income, is a little foggy. For now, we're just obsessed with going off the map of our ordinary lives.

I love getting lost. I love putting myself or finding myself in situations of discomfort, because it's there that discovery happens. I don't know how easy it is to get lost these days, with phones and mobile reception everywhere, but one can always leave one's phone at home. It's worth a shot, and often makes for a good tale later on down the road of life.

Going off piste used to worry my little boy enormously when I took him round Europe as a solo Mum some twenty years ago. We had physical maps then, of paper, that had to be origamid and pieced together if ripped, or were tiny and useless things in the Lonely Planet. I preferred to follow my own sense of direction and take a side street and see where it ended up. I didn't like taking the same route there as I did back - what if I missed something interesting, something new?

But my little boy used to get really, really worried. 'Are we lost again, Mummy?' he'd say, as we traipsed the cobbled streets of Lisboa, Barcelona or Praha.

'Not really', I'd say. 'We can always ask someone'.

'But where are we?' he'd cry. 'I don't want to be lost'. There was something terrifying about it for the little tacker. I'd bend down and hug him and say not to worry, that I'd find our way home, and that getting lost was a good thing to do because we'd find unexpected and interesting things. Now he lives in Melbourne with his own little boy and I'm not sure he has that wanderlust that I did, and still have. But I hope he still remembers the merits of getting lost.

He enjoyed it more when he was older. We used to cycle, the three of us, through the UK countryside. If you've ever read an Ordinance Survey map you'll know how difficult it can be to navigate the maze of villages, fields, old roman roads, woods and all kinds of navigational nightmares. Jamie would turn the map upside down and right way up and run his finger along lines and then point somewhere as if it was clear which way we were going. Inevitably, we'd take a short cut, and get lost, sometimes for hours.

This happened in Wales once. We left at 10 am for a quick ride, which resulted in us not getting back to the caravan park til after dark. It was pouring with rain and we had no idea where we were. I remember pushing our bikes up a hill in the woods and my son, all of 7 years old, encouraging me. 'Mum,' he said. 'It's fun to get lost!'.

It was for an hour or two. Then it got a bit exhausting. We'd eaten the last of our ginger biscuits and cheese crackers and were done. But it took a very long time to find a road, and when we did, it was dark and wet and we realised we were some twenty miles away from the caravan park. We knocked on a door - this is the middle of nowhere in Wales, rememember - for help. A lovely old lady drove Jamie back to the caravan park whilst Jarrah and I huddled on her doorstep. He got the car and brought us back, wet and shivering.

Still, we've never forgot it, even more for the woman who said 'oh yes, often mental patients from the asylum escape into those woods and we don't find them for weeks'. I'm not sure if those were her exact words, but they sure add to the story.

If one doesn't get lost, one has less stories.