Getting to Gjesasen near Flisa in Hedmark was meant to be straightforward, but I had already made a classic error before we even left Oslo airport. There I was, proudly presenting my phone to the car hire chap, showing him my carefully planned route. He squinted at it, then at me, then back at the phone. "This is the walking route," he said, in that polite Norwegian way that still manages to sound like gentle pity. Forty-seven kilometres of forest path, apparently. My other half gave me that look. You know the one. The one that says "I love you but honestly, how do you dress yourself in the morning?"

Anyway, an hour and a half of actual driving later, down roads that got progressively narrower and more enthusiastically wooded, we found ourselves in proper inland Norway. Hedmark has this wonderful knack of feeling immediately removed from everything. Not dramatic like the fjords, not showy at all. Just quietly, deeply rural. Forests that go on forever, the occasional red barn, and a sense that you have definitely left your everyday worries somewhere back near the E6.

The cottage sat where the trees opened up just enough to let some light through. A traditional timber place, painted that deep red that seems to glow when the sun hits it properly. My first thought, embarrassingly, was that it looked exactly like the sort of cabin a murderer might own in a Scandi crime drama. My second thought, as the kids piled out of the car already arguing about who got which bedroom, was that I absolutely did not care about my first thought.

The key was in the lockbox, which I fumbled with for several minutes while a mosquito made a thorough inspection of my neck. The door opened with that satisfying weight that old wooden doors have, and the smell hit me immediately. Pine, mostly, and something else. Wood smoke? Old books? Whatever it was, it smelled like holiday. The kind of holiday where you cook proper meals and play board games and argue about whose turn it is to fetch more firewood.

The living area was simple and unpretentious, with furniture that had clearly been chosen for surviving actual families rather than looking impressive in photographs. The kitchen had that slightly chaotic arrangement of pans and utensils that suggests many previous guests have attempted everything from pancakes to something more ambitious. I immediately felt at home. My cooking is mediocre at best, but there is something about a holiday kitchen that makes you want to try anyway.

The children had already discovered the garden, or what I suppose you would call the bit of grass and trees around the cottage. There was a small terrace with a barbecue that looked like it had seen some action, and beyond that just forest. Proper, go-for-a-wander-and-maybe-see-a-moose forest. My daughter announced she was going to build a den. My son announced he was going to find a stream. Neither of them asked about Wi-Fi, which I took as a positive sign.

As evening came on, that first evening, we sat outside with mugs of something warm and watched the light change through the trees. The quiet was almost theatrical. No traffic, no planes, just the occasional bird and the wind doing its thing in the pine tops. I thought about my walking route, still sitting there on my phone like a tiny monument to my own daftness. There is something humbling about getting things wrong and ending up somewhere right anyway. Perhaps that is what holidays are for, in part. A break from competence, from knowing exactly what you are doing.

The fire was already laid in the wood burner. I am dreadful at lighting fires, truly dreadful, but that evening I got it going on the third attempt. We sat around it as the temperature dropped outside, playing a card game with rules nobody could quite remember properly, and I felt that particular contentment that comes from having absolutely nowhere else to be.

That was our first day at Gjesasen. No mountains conquered, no sights ticked off, just a wrong turn corrected, a door opened, and the slow realisation that doing very little in a Norwegian forest might be exactly enough.