The satnav announced we had arrived at our destination precisely as I drove past a sign pointing to what looked like a farm track and a lot of snow. This was my first clue that technology and Norwegian mountain roads do not always see eye to eye. My second clue came thirty seconds later, when I attempted a three-point turn on a surface that can only be described as "polished ice with ambition" and nearly deposited our entire family, two suitcases, and a Boots meal deal into a drainage ditch.

Welcome to Vegglifjell, I thought, windscreen wipers working overtime, my wife making that small humming noise she does when she is choosing not to comment.

We found the proper turn eventually, after a brief conference with a man walking a dog who seemed unsurprised to direct lost Brits. The track climbed steadily through birch forest, the kind of landscape that makes you feel you have wandered into a Christmas card, albeit one where the roads department has taken a somewhat relaxed approach to gritting. Our hire car, a sensible Volvo that had seemed enormous in the airport car park, now felt distinctly compact against the scale of everything around us.

The cabin appeared suddenly, tucked into a fold of hillside with a view that genuinely made me forget, for about four seconds, that my hands were still gripping the steering wheel like I was landing a plane. It was exactly the sort of place the website had promised but you never quite believe will materialise in reality. Red timber walls, a proper wood-burning stove visible through the window, and a deck that looked out across a valley of nothing but trees and distance and sky. My daughter, who had been complaining about her tablet battery since Drammen, actually stopped mid-sentence.

The key was where they said it would be, which sounds like a small thing but after the satnav incident felt like a minor miracle. The door opened with that particular resistance of a building that spends half its year dealing with serious weather, and then we were inside, boots squeaking on the threshold, the smell of pine and something else, something clean and cold that had worked its way into the fabric of the place.

I will be honest, my first act was not to admire the craftsmanship or plan wholesome family activities. My first act was to locate the coffee maker, which I did with the urgency of a man who has been driving for four hours and recently contemplated his own mortality in a drainage ditch. It was one of those filter machines that gurgles reassuringly, and I stood there in my still-bundled outdoor layers, listening to it and watching the light change across the valley, and felt something in my shoulders that I had not realised was tight begin to loosen.

The children had already disappeared upstairs to investigate sleeping arrangements, which involved a degree of negotiation I chose to ignore. My wife was inspecting the kitchen with the particular focus of someone who has packed pasta for six meals and needs to know if the hob works. I took my coffee onto the deck, despite the cold, because some views demand immediate attention even at the cost of mild frostbite.

A ptarmigan wandered across the snow below, fat and unbothered and entirely unconcerned with my existence. I watched it for longer than I would care to admit, given it was essentially a very round bird doing nothing in particular. But that was rather the point, I think. We had come for this, for the doing of very little in a place that asks nothing of you except to be present and perhaps remember to bring proper boots.

The stove took three attempts to light, which I will attribute to altitude and not incompetence, and by evening the main room was warm in that particular way that only wood heat achieves, all orange glow and shifting shadows. We ate pasta number one of six at the long table, the children finally tired enough to sit still, my wife and I sharing that particular glance that says we have arrived somewhere that might actually deliver what we needed.

I thought about the drainage ditch on the way up, and the satnav, and the man with the dog who had clearly seen our type before. I thought about how I would tell this story later, making the mishap funnier and my own role in it more heroic. But sitting there, with the fire settling into embers and the absolute silence of the mountain pressing against the windows, I mostly thought that some wrong turns lead exactly where you need to be.