I have never been very good at reading ferry timetables, and this particular morning in Bergen was no exception. There I stood, rucksack on, thermos clutched like a lifeline, watching the little boat to Strandebarm pull away from the dock while I was still on the wrong side of the barrier. I had misread the departure by a full hour. The next sailing was not for another three hours. I did what any sensible British person would do: bought an overpriced coffee, found a bench with a view of the water, and pretended this was exactly what I had planned.

By the time I finally stepped off the ferry at Strandebarm, the afternoon sun was doing that low, golden thing that makes the Hardangerfjord look almost impossibly dramatic. The water was flat calm, the mountains were doing their best postcard impression, and I felt rather pleased with myself for having arrived at all. My holiday home was one of those classic white wooden places perched just above the shoreline, with a little garden sloping down towards the pebbles. The key was in the box where promised. I fumbled with the code, dropped it twice, and finally stumbled inside with all the grace of a Labrador on a polished floor.

The first thing that struck me was the smell. That particular Norwegian cabin scent of old wood, dried seaweed from somewhere nearby, and faintly, inexplicably, cinnamon. The previous guests had left a half-empty jar of spice in a cupboard. I decided this was charming rather than odd. The living room had enormous windows facing the fjord, and I spent a good ten minutes just standing there with my rucksack still on, watching a fishing boat putter past and feeling very smug about my life choices.

I had arrived with grand plans for serious walking. The Hardanger coast is criss-crossed with paths, and I had printed off routes like the keen hiker I occasionally pretend to be. That first evening, I unpacked my boots, laid out my maps, and fell asleep on the sofa before nine o'clock. The light, you see. That endless Norwegian summer light tricks your body into thinking it is still teatime when it is actually past your bedtime.

The next morning I woke to grey skies and a steady drizzle. This was not in my plan at all. I had packed for sunshine, for warm-weather adventures along the coast, for that particular joy of walking in a t-shirt with the fjord glittering beside you. Instead I found myself pulling on every layer I owned and standing at the kitchen window, staring out at the low cloud clinging to the mountains. The weather app on my phone showed a cheerful sun icon for the afternoon. I did not believe it for a second.

I went anyway. The path from Strandebarm runs along the shoreline, winding through birch woodland and occasionally opening out onto rocky beaches where the water laps at smooth stones. Within ten minutes I was damp. Within twenty I was properly wet. But something curious happened around the half-hour mark. The rain softened to that fine, almost misty stuff that does not really bother you once you accept it is happening. The fjord had turned a moody green-grey, and the mountains had vanished entirely into cloud, which made the whole landscape feel smaller, more intimate, like walking through a watercolour someone had not quite finished.

I passed an old boathouse, red paint peeling, and a small jetty where someone had left crab pots stacked in a neat pile. There were no other walkers. This was partly the weather, I suspect, and partly that midweek lull that coastal villages have. I felt genuinely alone in a way that is rare and slightly unnerving and rather wonderful. My boots squelched satisfyingly. I found myself laughing at nothing in particular, just the absurdity of having planned one thing and received another, and finding the other thing better.

By the time I turned back, the cloud had lifted in patches. Shafts of sunlight were doing that theatrical thing across the water, picking out individual trees on the far shore. My phone had been right after all, in its useless way. I was too wet to care much. Back at the cabin, I changed into dry clothes, made tea with the seriousness it deserves, and sat on the little wooden deck with a blanket around my shoulders. The sun was warm now, proper warmth, and steam was rising from my boots where I had propped them to dry.

That evening I walked again, properly this time, in just a shirt and light trousers. The path felt different in sunshine, more sociable somehow, though I still met no one. The same boathouse looked less melancholy, the same jetty more purposeful. I realised I was glad of the morning's rain, glad of having been forced out into it, glad of the way it had made me pay attention to details I might have missed in straightforward brightness. There is something about walking in weather that does not quite suit you that strips away pretension. You are simply there, moving through a landscape that does not care about your plans, and that honesty is refreshing.

I stayed a week. The weather continued its game of surprising me, sunshine following drizzle following that peculiar stillness that comes before a change. I walked every day, sometimes in shorts and sometimes in everything I owned, learning to read the sky and the feel of the air rather than my increasingly unreliable phone. The coast here is not dramatic in the way of steep cliffs and crashing waves. It is quieter, more subtle, the drama lying in the relationship between water and mountain and that particular Nordic light.

On my last morning I packed slowly, leaving the boots until the final moment. They were still slightly damp from the day before, and I smiled at them with the affection you feel for things that have been genuinely useful. The ferry back to Bergen left on time, and I was on it, having checked the timetable three times. I sat outside, wind in my face, watching the cabin shrink to a white dot and then disappear. I had arrived with plans and left with something better, which is, I am learning, what good journeys tend to do.