Only by trial and error did I find out that the correct php command to find the filesystem path of the /user/pages directory is:
$this->grav['locator']->findResource('page://');
Some failed tries were:
$this->grav['locator']->findResources('pages://');
$this->grav['locator']->findResource('pages');
Fairly frequently I dive into the Grav API documentation but for some reason, which for a large part is my limited dev knowledge, I can't make the connection with the rest of the documentation. I hope I have been looking on the wrong places. Any hints are greatly appreciated! Thanks.