I have never been brilliant at reading ferry timetables, and my arrival in Aure proved this beyond all doubt. There we were, my partner and I, sat on the wrong quay in Molde for a solid forty minutes, watching our actual boat glide past on the other side of the harbour like a smug white whale. By the time we sprinted round, rucksacks bouncing, we were that couple everyone stares at. You know the ones. Red-faced, laughing too loudly, apologising to strangers for no reason whatsoever.

Still, the crossing itself made up for it. The ferry wove through the Romsdal fjords in that lazy way they do, and I stood on deck pretending I was in a Nordic crime drama, albeit one where the detective keeps checking his phone for signal and eating a slightly squashed petrol station sandwich. The mountains rose on either side, green and serious, with waterfalls threading down like silver ribbons someone had forgotten to tidy away.

Aure itself appeared quietly, almost apologetically, after the grand theatre of the journey. Our holiday home sat up a gentle slope from the water, a traditional wooden place with that particular red-brown stain you see everywhere in these parts. The owners had left the key in a padlock box with a combination that, naturally, I had written down wrong. Another ten minutes of fumbling in the drizzle, and we were in.

The first thing that struck me was the smell. Old wood, coffee from the machine we immediately switched on, and something faintly salty from the sea air pushing through the slightly stiff windows. The place was simple, properly simple, not the sort of holiday let where someone has tried too hard with scatter cushions and inspirational quotes about hygge. Just good furniture, a solid kitchen table, and views across the sound that made me stop mid-unpacking and stand there like a fool with a tea towel in my hand.

We had planned, in that optimistic way you do before arriving somewhere, to tackle a serious hike that very afternoon. The folder in the kitchen mentioned a coastal path heading north, clinging to the shoreline with proper dramatic drops and the promise of eagle sightings. I had packed my serious boots and everything. But Norwegian weather, as I ought to have remembered from a previous trip, has its own agenda entirely.

The drizzle firmed up into something more committed. Not quite rain, not quite mist, but thoroughly wet nonetheless. We stood on the little wooden deck in our waterproofs, looking out at a world that had gone soft and grey around the edges. The mountains across the water vanished entirely, then reappeared like a magician's trick, then vanished again. It was, in its own strange way, completely mesmerising.

"We could just walk to the village," my partner suggested, in that tone of someone who knows when to retreat gracefully.

So we did. The road wound along the water's edge, no pavement, just occasional pull-ins for cars that never seemed to come. The houses were scattered, each with its little boat shed and a garden of rocks and tough-looking flowers. An old man was mending nets outside one place, and he nodded at us without quite making eye contact, which I have learned is the Norwegian way of being perfectly friendly.

The village itself, if you can call it that, had a small shop with baffling opening hours and a harbour wall where we sat on a bench and ate the sandwiches we had not eaten on the ferry. The weather began to turn in that sudden manner it has here, the grey lifting to reveal patches of blue, the water changing from sullen pewter to something approaching turquoise. We walked back by a lower path, scrambling over rocks where the tide had left pools full of tiny, perfect shells.

That evening, we cooked simply, drank wine we had brought from the airport, and sat with the windows open to the strange pale light that lasts for hours at that latitude. I found myself thinking about how often I arrive somewhere with a fixed idea of what I will do, what I will feel, how the experience will be shaped. And how often, if I let it, the place itself suggests something better, something I had not planned for at all. The serious hike could wait. The coastal wandering, the sitting on harbour walls, the watching of weather moving across water like a living thing, these had been enough. More than enough, really.

I went to bed that night with the unfamiliar sensation of having got something right without meaning to. The boots stayed in the corner, still serious, still waiting. Outside, the light finally faded towards midnight, and somewhere across the water, a bird called out that I could not identify and never will.