I have never been so relieved to see a wooden cabin in my life, and that includes the time I got caught in a hailstorm on the Yorkshire Moors. The ferry from Hufthamar had deposited me on Stolmen with the confident efficiency only Norwegians seem to manage, and there I stood with a rucksack full of groceries, a set of keys, and the sinking realisation that I had absolutely no idea which turning led to my holiday let.

The instructions had seemed so simple when I scribbled them at home. "Left at the co-op, past the red boathouse, second lane on the right." What I had failed to account for was that every boathouse in Austevoll appears to be red, and that Norwegians take their co-operative shops rather seriously, meaning I had already passed three of them without knowing which one counted.

I marched up what I hoped was a lane, past a cluster of weathered fishing sheds that smelled gloriously of salt and diesel, and found myself at a dead end staring at someone's private jetty. A friendly golden retriever regarded me with the patient pity dogs reserve for the fundamentally lost. I waved apologetically at an upstairs window, turned on my heel, and trudged back to try again.

This is where the magic began, though I did not know it yet. Taking the wrong fork a second time, I stumbled onto a narrow gravel track that wound between granite outcrops and patches of wild blueberry. The afternoon light was doing that extraordinary Scandinavian thing where everything glows from within, and the sea kept appearing through gaps in the terrain, a different shade of blue-grey each time. I stopped worrying about finding the cabin. I started noticing things instead.

A tiny cove I would never have found on purpose, barely twenty metres of pebble beach with a single weathered rowing boat pulled above the tideline. The water so clear I could watch a crab negotiate a barnacled rock in what felt like real-time documentary. I sat on a flat stone and ate one of the oranges I had packed, feeling faintly ridiculous about my earlier panic, and profoundly grateful for it.

The track petered out at a small meadow where someone had positioned a bench facing west, presumably for sunset contemplation. No plaque, no sign, no indication this spot existed at all except for the worn grass path leading to it. I made a mental note to return with proper provisions, by which I mean the bottle of aquavit I had optimistically packed.

By the time I actually found the cabin, tucked where a proper lane finally revealed itself, the light was fading and my shoulders ached from the unplanned hiking. I dropped my bags, laughed out loud at my own incompetence, and immediately went back out with my camera. The getting lost had become the point. The wrong turns had shown me what no guidebook could, what no amount of diligent research would have uncovered, because these places do not announce themselves. They simply exist, quietly, for whoever happens to wander past.

That evening I sat on the cabin's terrace with a cup of something warming, watching the last light fade over the islands. Tomorrow I would get lost again, deliberately this time, with a packed lunch and no particular destination. Some holidays you plan meticulously. Others, like this one, you simply allow to unfold from your own splendid inability to follow basic directions. I have never been more grateful for a red boathouse in my life.