I should have known the holiday was going to be memorable when I tried to unlock the wrong cabin. There we were, me and my partner, standing in the late afternoon sun in Buskerud, Norway, jiggling a key that absolutely refused to turn, while I muttered increasingly unkind things about the letting agency. Twenty minutes of escalating panic and one very apologetic phone call later, we realised our actual place was fifty metres further up the gravel track, partially hidden behind a cluster of birch trees. The name on the key fob had worn off, you see. I blamed the ferry crossing from Newcastle for my fuzzy head; my partner blamed me for being a pillock. Both were probably fair.

The drive from Oslo had been gorgeous in that understated Scandinavian way. Rolling green valleys, the occasional red wooden farmhouse looking like something from a tourism brochure, and road signs I pretended to understand. We had wound through Hemsedal village, past the ski lifts standing idle in the summer warmth like skeletal sentinels waiting for their winter purpose. The place felt deliciously empty, the off-season hush that makes you feel slightly smug about your timing.

Our cabin, when we finally found it, sat perched on a gentle slope with views that made my key-related tantrum feel rather foolish. Ulsakstolen, the area is called, and the property had that satisfying Norwegian cabin aesthetic: dark timber, a generous deck, and windows that seemed designed to frame the landscape like paintings. I immediately claimed the bedroom with the better view, citing my earlier navigational trauma as justification. My partner rolled their eyes but let me have it.

We had arrived with grand plans for serious mountain walking. The Hemsedal hills were calling, or so my research had suggested. I had packed proper boots, moisture-wicking socks, the lot. I was going to be a person who hiked with purpose and returned with thigh muscles of steel. The weather, however, had other ideas.

The first morning dawned grey and drizzly, the kind of persistent damp that seeps into your enthusiasm. We set out anyway, because we are British and stubborn, following a trail that wound up through low birch forest towards what the map promised were open ridges. Within an hour, the drizzle had graduated to determined rain. My expensive waterproof jacket proved itself merely water-resistant, a distinction I now understand with bitter clarity. We squelched back to the cabin, me developing a chafe in an unfortunate place, my partner maintaining a diplomatic silence about my earlier insistence that "a bit of rain never hurt anyone."

The second day brought sunshine so glorious it felt like compensation. We walked instead to the nearby river, following its course through gentler terrain, and found a spot where the water pooled deep enough for a swim. The cold shocked a yelp out of me that echoed off the hills. My partner, wiser, merely paddled and laughed. We lay on warm rocks afterwards, drying like lizards, and I felt that particular holiday contentment that comes from doing very little very slowly.

By day three, I had abandoned my mountain conqueror fantasy entirely. We found a local trail that meandered through sheep pastures and smallholdings, chatting with an elderly farmer whose English was better than my Norwegian, which is to say he had some and I had none. He told us about the winter crowds, the skiers, the way the place transformed. I found myself slightly glad to see it in its quieter mood, the green season, the in-between time.

The weather continued its theatrical shifts. One afternoon of thick fog made even our gentle river walk feel like wandering through a dream. We got slightly lost, which I blamed on poor visibility rather than my established pattern of navigational incompetence. Another day brought heat so unexpected that we spent hours on the deck, reading and dozing, occasionally commenting on the view as if we had not already done so twenty times.

I had wanted to return from this holiday with stories of epic walks and physical achievement. Instead, I returned with a mild sunburn, a new appreciation for doing less, and the certain knowledge that I cannot be trusted with keys. The Hemsedal hills are still there, waiting for someone more determined. I suspect I will return, perhaps in winter when the ski lifts stir back to life, and I will almost certainly try the wrong cabin again. Some things do not change.