I have to be honest with you about this one. I'd set my heart on a proper coastal walking holiday, the sort where you tramp along cliff paths with the salt spray in your face and reward yourself with a picnic of smoked fish and brown bread. Uvdal in Buskerud, Norway, is not that. Not even slightly. But we'll get to my spectacular failure of geography in a moment.

The journey there was lovely enough, I'll give it that. Flew into Oslo, picked up a hire car that smelled faintly of previous occupants' dog, and headed northwest through some properly dramatic Norwegian countryside. The plan, such as it was, involved reaching my coastal walking paradise by mid-afternoon, unpacking my carefully selected hiking boots, and setting off for a sunset stroll along the water's edge. I'd packed three different waterproof jackets because I'd read somewhere that the Norwegian coast could turn on you. Bit of an understatement, as it happens, but not in the way I expected.

The mishap occurred somewhere around the town of Geilo, when the satnav started getting decidedly shirty with me. "Turn around where possible," it kept insisting, in that passive-aggressive tone they all have. I'd been driving for hours and the sea was nowhere. Not a sniff of it. Just mountains, forests, and the occasional confused-looking sheep. I pulled over at a petrol station, bought an overpriced coffee, and finally bothered to actually look at where I'd booked. Uvdal. Inland Buskerud. Two hundred and something kilometres from the nearest coastline. I'd somehow conflated it with some entirely different place I'd seen on a television programme about fjords. The shame was immediate and thorough.

Still, the cottage itself made up for my idiocy somewhat. Traditional red wooden place with white trim, exactly the sort of thing you'd sketch if someone asked you to draw a Norwegian cabin. Proper little porch with views over rolling hills, a wood-burning stove that I became far too emotionally attached to, and a kitchen where I immediately burned my first attempt at making proper coffee. The owners had left a helpful note about local walks, all of them very firmly land-based. Lakes, forests, the odd modest peak. Not a cliff path in sight.

The weather, when I bothered to notice it properly, was doing something extraordinary. That warm Norwegian summer spell where the days stretch endlessly and the light seems to come from everywhere at once. I'd packed for bracing coastal winds and got instead this gentle, almost Mediterranean warmth that made my heavy walking trousers feel faintly ridiculous. I ended up doing most of my exploring in shorts I'd bought in a panic from a sports shop in Nesbyen, having brought nothing suitable for inland summer whatsoever.

The local walks turned out to be rather wonderful once I swallowed my coastal pride. There's a path around Uvdalsvatnet, the lake, that takes you through birch forest and out into open meadows where the views stretch on forever. Another route heads up towards Vassfaret, gentler than it sounds, winding through valleys where the light filters through in that particular Nordic way that makes everything look slightly enchanted. I walked for hours, sweating more than I'd expected, filling my water bottle from streams and feeling pleasantly smug about my adaptability.

What struck me most was how the warmth changed everything. The locals clearly thought this was marvellous weather, practically tropical, and had adopted a sort of holiday atmosphere. Children splashing in the lake, barbecues smoking in cottage gardens, everyone slightly pink about the shoulders. I'd prepared for rugged coastal endurance and found myself instead in something approaching a very pleasant, very Norwegian garden party.

By day three I'd completely abandoned my original plan. No more mourning the coast. I walked the forest trails in my inappropriate shorts, got slightly lost near a place called Trillemarka, and spent an afternoon simply sitting by the lake watching dragonflies dart about. The gentle self-reflection came one evening, beer in hand on that porch, watching the sun refuse properly to set. I'd been so fixated on my idea of what this holiday should be that I'd nearly missed what it actually was. There's something humbling about discovering you're the sort of person who books a holiday without checking a map properly, and something rather nice about realising it doesn't matter as much as you feared.

I walked back to Oslo through countryside that still showed no sign of the sea, my boots now properly broken in on forest paths rather than coastal rock. Would I recommend Uvdal? Absolutely, though perhaps check your geography first. The walking is peaceful, the warm weather makes everything feel unexpectedly generous, and the complete absence of coastline somehow becomes part of the charm. Just pack lighter trousers than I did, and perhaps don't tell anyone about the satnav incident until you've got to know them quite well.