I should have known the holiday was going to be eventful when I tried to unlock the wrong cabin. Three hours of driving from Alesund Airport, winding through fjord roads that made my stomach do loop-the-loops, and there I was standing in somebody else's porch light at half ten at night, jiggling a key that stubbornly refused to turn. The actual owner of that particular cabin emerged looking understandably confused, holding a cup of something that definitely was not tea. I mumbled apologies in what I hoped sounded like Norwegian but was probably closer to panicked gibberish, and scurried back to my hire car to find the correct place two hundred yards down the lane.

The proper cabin, when I finally located it, sat perched above Molde with that particular hush you only get in places where nature has not yet learned to compete with traffic noise. My first morning, I woke to mist curling through the trees like slow-moving ghosts and made coffee that tasted better than anything I have ever produced in my own kitchen. The view from the small deck was ridiculous in that understated Norwegian way, mountains shouldering their way above the Romsdal fjord while I stood there in slippers, clutching my mug like a prize.

I had not planned to get lost. I am not one of those people who romanticises wandering without purpose. I like a map, a plan, a clear objective. But the trail behind the cabin looked innocent enough, a narrow path marked with red paint on rocks that I assumed would loop neatly back to where I started. It did not. Within forty minutes I was somewhere that felt genuinely remote, the kind of place where mobile signals go to die. The red markers had vanished, replaced by moss and uncertainty.

That is how I found the small lake. It was not on any map I had seen, barely more than a pond really, tucked between birch trees with water so still it looked like a photograph. I sat on a rock and ate the emergency chocolate I had stuffed in my pocket, feeling simultaneously foolish and rather pleased with myself. There were no other footprints, no litter, no evidence that anyone else had bothered to come this way recently. The silence had texture to it, thick and alive.

Getting properly lost taught me something I had forgotten about holidays. The best bits rarely happen where you expect them. I spent the next few days deliberately abandoning my plans. A wrong turn on the road to Molde town led me to a tiny beach where locals were swimming in water that would have finished me off in seconds, but where someone had built a rough wooden bench perfect for watching boats drift past. Another accidental detour took me up a farm track that ended at a viewpoint no brochure had mentioned, the kind of spot where you stand and think unoriginal but sincere thoughts about how small you are in the grand scheme.

I did make it to Molde eventually, charming in its quiet way, and I walked the famous viewpoint path that everyone recommends. It was lovely, genuinely. But I keep thinking about that lake, about the beach I found by missing a junction, about the evening I followed what I thought was a shortcut and ended up watching the sunset from a rocky outcrop with only a startled sheep for company.

The key mishap on arrival set the tone perfectly. Some holidays need a bit of confusion to shake you out of your usual patterns. By the time I left, I was almost grateful to that wrong cabin and its patient owner, because without that small humiliation I might have spent the whole week being efficient about my sightseeing instead of accidentally discovering what the place was actually like.