Getting to Uvdal took roughly forever and a bit, which I suppose is what you sign up for when you decide a cabin in the Norwegian mountains sounds romantic. My partner and I flew to Oslo, picked up a hire car that smelled faintly of fish and optimism, and promptly got lost somewhere near Drammen because I misread a sign and thought "E134" was a suggestion rather than an instruction. Three hours of winding roads later, we found ourselves in Buskerud proper, surrounded by pine trees and the nagging suspicion we should have packed more jumpers.

The mishap came during the final stretch, on a gravel track that looked like it had last seen maintenance sometime in the late eighties. I was navigating, or rather pretending to, while my partner drove with the particular tension of someone who has just spotted a pothole the size of a small bathtub. "Left here," I said confidently, pointing at what turned out to be a private driveway belonging to a very serious-looking man with a tractor. We reversed with the grace of a shopping trolley in a gale, and I spent the remaining five minutes in contemplative silence, wondering why my sense of direction had not improved since I got lost in a multi-storey car park in Swindon.

The cabin itself appeared suddenly, tucked between birch trees with a view down towards the valley that made me forget entirely about my navigational shame. It was one of those traditional Norwegian timber places, red paint and white trim, with a proper wood-burning stove visible through the window and a deck that looked made for sitting with a cup of something warm. The key was exactly where the booking said it would be, which felt like small miracle given my recent performance.

Stepping inside, the smell hit first. Not the fishy optimism of the car, but something older and better. Wood smoke and pine resin and that particular clean scent of a place that spends most of its year closed up, waiting. The floors were proper wood, slightly uneven in the way that makes you trust them more. The kitchen had a view straight out to the trees, and I caught myself standing there like a fool, holding a carrier bag of groceries, just staring at a squirrel.

My partner had already found the stove and was examining it with the intense concentration of someone who has never successfully lit one but refuses to admit it. We spent twenty minutes with newspaper and kindling, producing mostly smoke and wounded pride, before realising there were clear instructions in a folder labelled "VELKOMMEN" that we had both somehow missed. The folder also contained practical things about the water supply and where to find extra candles, plus a handwritten note wishing us a pleasant stay in slightly wobbly English. I found that more touching than I expected, standing in a stranger's cabin in the middle of nowhere, holding a note from someone I would never meet.

By the time we got the fire going properly, darkness had settled outside with the suddenness that still surprises me about northern evenings. The temperature dropped, the stove crackled, and I sat on the slightly worn sofa with my feet up, watching flames dance behind sooty glass. My partner was already investigating the bedroom situation, reporting back that the duvets were improbably thick and the pillows smelled of storage. I nodded along, but really I was thinking about the gravel track and the wrong turn and the serious man with his tractor, and how sometimes getting slightly lost is the only way to find a place that feels properly found.

We had not even been there two hours, and already Uvdal had the particular quality of somewhere that slows you down whether you planned to or not.