I had convinced myself that driving a hire car through Norwegian fjord country would be a doddle. I have driven in the Lake District, I told my partner, how much harder can it be? This hubris lasted approximately forty minutes past Bergen airport, right up until I confidently followed what I swore was the sat nav's instruction and found us bumping down a gravel track that grew narrower, steeper, and increasingly existential with every metre. The track ended at a sheep gate. Just a gate, some very judgmental sheep, and a view of what I slowly realised was entirely the wrong fjord.

My partner, who had been suspiciously quiet, finally spoke. "You do know we're meant to be on the other side of that mountain, don't you?"

We were not on the other side of that mountain.

The turnaround manoeuvre took twelve minutes and one small argument about whose fault this definitely was not. But here is the thing about getting properly, stupidly lost in Hordaland: you stumble upon places no brochure bothers with. Retracing our route, we spotted a hand-painted sign for something called "Kvitlen" pointing down an even smaller lane. We were already late, already flustered, already committed to chaos. We turned.

The lane delivered us to a pebble beach no wider than a cricket pitch, where an elderly man sat alone with a fishing rod and a thermos. He nodded at us as if strangers appearing from nowhere was perfectly routine. The water was that impossible fjord green, the kind of colour that makes you suspect your eyes are malfunctioning. We sat on a driftwood log and shared the emergency packet of custard creams I had stashed in the glovebox. It remains one of the finest lunches of my life.

Properly chastened and only slightly more competent, we eventually found our way to the actual property in Skanevik, part of the Etne municipality. The owner had left the key in a classic Norwegian key box, plus a handwritten note mentioning that the boiler could be "temperamental" and that the nearest shop closed at six, which was in seventeen minutes. We made it with three minutes to spare, purchasing bread, brown cheese, and something called "lefse" that I initially mistook for a cleaning cloth.

The cottage itself sat above the village with a view down towards Skanevik's small harbour. That first evening, still giddy from our accidental detour, we decided to explore without purpose. We followed a path behind the property that seemed to lead nowhere in particular, climbing through birch woodland that smelled of damp earth and something faintly citrus I never identified. The path forked twice. We chose wrong both times, by design rather than accident by that point, and found ourselves emerging onto a rocky outcrop above a waterfall none of the local maps we later consulted seemed to name.

We named it ourselves, naturally. "Kvitlen Two," in honour of the beach, though the logic was shaky and we had consumed some local beer by then.

The next morning, properly rested and slightly smug about our discoveries, we attempted to find Kvitlen again. Failed completely. Found instead a small pier where someone had abandoned a rowing boat full of rainwater, and beyond it a trail that led to a meadow where two ponies regarded us with profound disinterest. Each wrong turn that holiday became its own small victory. The fjord country around Etne does not reward the efficient. It rewards the wandering, the slightly foolish, the people who mistake custard creams for adequate provisions.

By our final day, we had compiled a private map of nonsensical places: the sheep gate of shame, the nameless waterfall, the pony meadow, a particular rock where the phone signal returned just enough to send a smug photograph. We never did locate that first beach again. The elderly fisherman and his thermos remain, in my memory, slightly mythical now, a guardian of the accidentally found.

Driving back to Bergen, my partner navigated while I drove, both of us significantly more humble about Norwegian roads and significantly more enthusiastic about getting them wrong.