The ferry from Bergen to Bomlo was meant to be the relaxing bit of the journey after I'd already made a right hash of driving through the city centre. I'd put the wrong postcode into the sat nav and ended up doing three laps of some residential street in Fana while a local in a Volvo estate watched me with the sort of patient amusement you usually reserve for toddlers attempting to put their shoes on the wrong feet. I waved apologetically. He waved back, still grinning.

By the time I reached the ferry terminal, I was already flustered, which explains why I managed to leave my car window completely down during the crossing. The Norwegian woman in the vehicle next to me tapped on my door to point this out, then spent the remaining twenty minutes of the journey explaining, in flawless English, that she'd once done the same thing in Stavanger and returned to find a seagull had made itself quite at home on her passenger seat. "He was very rude about leaving," she said, completely deadpan. "No manners at all, that bird."

The holiday home itself sat perched above a rocky shoreline, all weathered wood and enormous windows that made me feel slightly exposed, as if I were starring in a very boring nature documentary. I was still unloading my bags when a chap called Oddmund appeared from the neighbouring property, introduced himself by announcing he'd lived there since before colour television came to Norway, and insisted on helping me carry my suitcase despite my protests. He took one look at my hiking boots and declared them "city boots," which I think was the most cutting thing anyone's said to me since secondary school.

"Those will last you one afternoon on the coastal path," he said, shaking his head with theatrical despair. "Then you will phone your mother and complain." I admitted I hadn't actually rung my mother since arriving in Norway. Oddmund looked genuinely horrified and made me promise to do so that evening. "The rocks here are beautiful, yes, but they do not care if you are lonely."

That first evening, I walked down to the small harbour near the property, partly to escape Oddmund's well-meaning surveillance and partly because I'd forgotten to bring any actual food and was hoping for divine intervention. Instead, I found a woman called Ingerbritt sitting on a bench with a thermos and two cups, one of which she silently offered me without any preamble whatsoever. She explained she came there every evening to "supervise the boats," though as far as I could tell, the boats required no supervision whatsoever and she simply enjoyed the quiet.

We sat in comfortable silence for several minutes before she asked, out of nowhere, whether I was running away from something or towards something. I spluttered into my coffee, which was extraordinarily strong and slightly fishy in a way I couldn't identify. "English people always think they are being subtle," she said, not unkindly. "But you arrive with too much luggage and too little plan. This is always one or the other."

I started to formulate some defensive response about simply wanting to experience authentic Norwegian coastal life, but she held up her hand. "I am not criticising. I ran away to Bomlo forty years ago. The ferry arrived, I stepped off, and I thought: here, the wind sounds honest. So I stayed." She poured me more of the dubious coffee. "The wind still sounds honest. I check every evening, just in case."

Walking back up to the house in the half-light, I passed Oddmund again, who was apparently conducting some kind of inspection of my rental's exterior woodwork with a torch. "Good conversation with Ingerbritt?" he called out, not looking up. "She told you about the wind, yes? She tells everyone. I tell everyone about your boots. We all have our things." He clicked off his torch and wished me goodnight, and I stood there on the rocky path feeling slightly ridiculous in my inadequate footwear, already wondering what other characters this small island had waiting for me, and whether any of them would approve of my boots, or my life choices, or my failure to telephone my mother.