I have never been so grateful to see a wooden cabin in my entire life. After a six-hour drive from Oslo, which included one spectacular wrong turn that took us through what I am fairly certain was someone's farmyard, we finally spotted the Sjusjoen cabin peeping through the pine trees. My partner had been navigating using a phone with three percent battery and an attitude of blind optimism. I had been driving and quietly fuming since Hamar. The farmyard incident was my fault, technically, as I had insisted the sat nav "probably knew a shortcut." It did not. We were greeted by a very unimpressed sheep.

The cabin itself, when we actually reached it, was one of those proper Nordic timber builds that makes you feel instantly healthier just looking at it. Red paint, white trim, a little porch with two chairs facing the trees. My first thought was that I could happily die there, preferably after several days of doing absolutely nothing. My second thought was that I desperately needed the toilet, having refused all service station stops since Lillehammer on some misguided principle about "making good time."

The key was in a lockbox, which took me ten minutes to open because I was trying the code backwards. Gentle self-reflection moment: I am nearly forty and still cannot follow simple written instructions when flustered. My partner watched this performance with the patient expression of someone who has seen it many times before. When the door finally swung open, the smell hit us immediately. Pine, mostly, and something else clean and woody that I later learned was the proper Norwegian way of keeping a cabin aired. No must, no damp, just that particular scent of a place that spends most of its year waiting quietly for people to arrive and slow down.

The living area was simple and exactly right. A squishy sofa positioned to catch the morning light, a small table for cards or cups of tea, and windows that framed the forest like deliberate paintings. I walked straight to the kitchen, which had everything needed for actual cooking rather than the usual holiday home pretence. Proper knives. A frying pan that had seen genuine use. I opened the fridge out of habit and found it empty, which was perfect. We had stopped at a Coop in Ringsaker and loaded up on brown cheese, crispbread, and enough coffee to fuel a small expedition.

What struck me most, that first afternoon, was the quality of the light. We arrived in late June, and the sun simply refused to behave properly. It hung about in the sky for hours, casting everything in this soft gold that made even our battered estate car look almost romantic parked outside. I dragged one of the porch chairs to face the clearing and sat with a cup of tea that went cold because I kept forgetting to drink it. A wood pigeon called somewhere. Something small rustled in the undergrowth. I did not investigate. This was the whole point, I realised. Not investigating. Not improving. Just sitting.

My partner appeared with a book they had been meaning to read since Christmas and promptly fell asleep in it. I watched a cloud move across the clearing so slowly I could track its progress. At some point I made another cup of tea. The evening stretched out without any pressure to fill it, and for the first time in months I felt my shoulders drop away from my ears. The sheep, I decided, had probably forgiven me. I certainly forgave myself for the farmyard detour. Some wrong turns, it turns out, simply add to the eventual relief of arrival.