I have never been particularly good at reading ferry timetables, a fact that became embarrassingly clear somewhere between Bergen and Tysnes. There I was, sat in a hire car that smelled faintly of pine air freshener and regret, watching the little boat I was meant to be on chug happily away without me. The next crossing was two hours. Two hours to kill in a car park overlooking a fjord so beautiful it almost made the blunder worthwhile. Almost.

By the time I actually reached the holiday home on Tysnes, I was in that peculiar state of travel delirium where everything feels slightly unreal. The property sat among trees on a quiet hillside, modest and red-painted in that classic Norwegian way that makes you feel instantly cosy. I dumped my bags, made a cup of tea that tasted of victory, and decided immediate exploration was essential despite the fading light. This is how discoveries happen, I told myself. This is how one finds hidden gems.

I found the first one by walking in entirely the wrong direction. The path behind the house was supposed to loop back, according to a map I had definitely looked at properly and definitely misunderstood. Instead it led me down through birch woods to a tiny cove I never would have found on purpose. No beach to speak of, just smooth rocks sloping into water so still it reflected the evening sky like polished metal. I sat there until the midges found me, feeling smug about my navigational incompetence.

The next morning I set out deliberately to get lost, which I appreciate is a contradiction. I drove without much plan along narrow roads that ribboned between hills and sudden glimpses of the Hardangerfjord. Somewhere near Vage I took a turning that looked interesting, which is travel code for "probably a dead end." It was, technically, but the dead end featured a small pier where an elderly man was mending nets. He spoke no English, I speak barely any Norwegian, and yet we had a perfectly satisfactory conversation involving much pointing and shared chocolate biscuits. He showed me where to spot sea eagles, which I did not see, but the trying felt important.

Tysnes itself is not exactly undiscovered, yet it wears its popularity lightly. I wandered into the village centre expecting tourist bustle and found instead a handful of locals discussing something animatedly outside the Co-op. The church, white and upright, sat quietly among graves so old the names had worn to whispers. I sat on a bench meant for someone else and watched a cat patrol the churchyard with the confidence of property ownership.

My favourite accidental find came on my final day. I had meant to visit the known viewpoint, took a wrong fork, and ended up at what I can only describe as a field with ambition. It sloped down to another hidden inlet, this one with a single red boathouse and a rowing boat tied to a rock. Someone had left a folding chair facing the water, and I sat in it without permission, feeling like an intruder and a pilgrim simultaneously. The silence there was not empty but full of small sounds, water lapping, distant sheep, my own breathing slowing to match something older.

I thought about competence, about plans, about the anxiety of not knowing where I was. I am someone who usually checks directions three times, who arrives early, who dislikes uncertainty. Yet here was joy in the unplanned, in the path that led nowhere official, in the conversation without shared language, in the borrowed chair at the edge of a fjord I could not name. Getting lost had become, unexpectedly, a way of finding something else entirely.

I left Tysnes with sand in my shoes from coves not on any itinerary, with chocolate biscuit crumbs in my pocket, with a ferry timetable now permanently folded in my bag as a reminder to check it properly next time, or perhaps not to worry so much about next times at all.