The drive from Bergen to Stordalen was one of those journeys where you start off full of optimism, Spotify playlist at the ready, and end up white-knuckling a hire car up a gravel track wondering if your sat-nav has developed a personal vendetta against you. I'd set off in bright afternoon sunshine, fully expecting to arrive before dinner. I did not arrive before dinner. I did, however, arrive with a boot full of shopping bags, a passenger seat covered in spilled coffee, and the profound realisation that Norwegian road signs become deeply philosophical when you're lost and hungry.

The coffee incident happened at a petrol station somewhere near Os. I'd bought what I believed was a sensible cup for the road, a sturdy cardboard affair with a sensible lid. What I had not accounted for was my own spectacular clumsiness when attempting to close the fuel cap. One elbow, one ill-judged movement, and suddenly my rental Volvo smelled like a moderately successful cafe. I spent the next twenty minutes on the forecourt with a packet of wet wipes and the hollow expression of a man who has just soiled his own transport. A passing local watched me with what I can only describe as compassionate amusement. I gave him a thumbs up. He did not return it.

By the time I found the turning for Stordalen, the light had gone that particular soft grey that Hordaland does so well, the kind of dusk that makes every fjord look like a watercolour and every mountain like a sleeping beast. The track wound upward through birch forest, the kind of narrow gravel affair that makes you question every life choice that led you to rent a vehicle with the ground clearance of a house brick. I crawled along, windows down, breathing in air that tasted of pine and cold water and something else, something that made me realise I hadn't properly filled my lungs in months.

And then the cabin appeared.

I'd seen the photographs, of course. I'd studied them with the intensity of a man planning a small heist. But nothing prepares you for the actual moment when a wooden building reveals itself in a clearing, smoke curling from its chimney, the whole thing looking like it had grown there rather than been built. The Stordalen cabin sat among low shrubs and weathered stone, its red paint darkened to burgundy in the fading light. A small porch light glowed amber. Somewhere nearby, water moved over rock.

I killed the engine and sat there for a moment, listening. Complete silence, except for the wind in the trees and my own slightly elevated breathing. The coffee catastrophe suddenly seemed very far away, very small. I stepped out onto gravel that crunched satisfyingly underfoot, and the cold hit me properly for the first time, that clean Norwegian cold that feels like a friendly slap.

The key was where promised, in a little metal box with a combination that took me three attempts because I was too busy gawping at the view to concentrate. The door opened with a satisfying weight, the kind of solid wooden heft that British doors lost sometime in the 1980s. Inside, the warmth wrapped around me immediately, wood stove still radiating from whoever had prepared the place. The smell hit me next, pine and beeswax and something faintly of coffee, which made me laugh out loud in the empty room.

I stood in the doorway like an idiot, bags still in the car, just taking it in. The living space opened upward to exposed beams, a proper stove squatting in one corner like a faithful dog. Windows framed darkness that would, I knew, become fjord and mountain come morning. A small kitchen ran along one wall, compact and practical, the kind that makes you want to cook something involving fish and potatoes immediately. Up a narrow staircase, I could see the edge of a sleeping loft.

I thought about my flat in London, about the traffic noise I normally fell asleep to, about the way I'd been living in a permanent hum of notification and obligation. I thought about how I'd spent twenty minutes of my life mourning spilled coffee on a petrol forecourt. Then I thought about how very far away all of that felt, and how very glad I was to be exactly here, exactly now, with damp shoes and a slightly ridiculous story and a whole week of this silence stretching ahead of me.

I fetched my bags eventually, of course. Made tea with water that tasted of nothing but itself, which is rarer than you'd think. Sat on the porch as darkness completed its victory over the landscape, watching the last grey fade from the sky, feeling the cold press against my face while the stove's warmth held my back.

The coffee stain never did come out of the passenger seat. I rather hope it never does.