I had been dreaming of doing absolutely nothing for months, so when our hire car finally crested that last hill above Molde and the Romsdalfjord opened up below us, I felt the tension drain out of my shoulders like water from a bathtub. That is, until I realised I had been so busy admiring the view that I had missed the turning for our holiday let by a good half a mile and had to perform what can only be described as an agricultural three-point turn on a road barely wide enough for a bicycle.

The cottage sat just above the waterline, a proper red wooden affair with white trim that looked like it had been plucked from a Norwegian tourism brochure. I fumbled with the key box for longer than I care to admit, dropping the code sheet twice in my eagerness to get inside and start my official programme of lethargy. My partner, ever patient, simply leaned against the car and ate the last of our airport sandwiches while I muttered apologies to a very judgmental seagull.

The door swung open to that particular hush that only comes from a place that has been waiting quietly for someone to arrive. The living room smelled faintly of pine and old books, and someone, perhaps a previous guest with excellent taste, had left a well-thumbed copy of a Nesbo novel on the windowsill. I claimed it immediately, as if ownership of abandoned literature were some ancient holiday custom.

We had arrived in that sweet spot of early afternoon when the sun sits high over the fjord and turns the water into something too bright to look at directly. I dragged a chair onto the small wooden deck, positioned it with the precision of a sundial enthusiast, and sat. That was it. That was the activity. The warmth on my face, the distant putter of a boat somewhere out on the water, the occasional rustle of what I chose to believe was a friendly field mouse rather than anything requiring investigation.

My partner wandered down to the rocky shoreline, returning twenty minutes later with a handful of smooth stones and an expression of profound satisfaction. We compared our respective achievements: I had finished a chapter and developed a mild sunburn on my left knee. They had found a stone shaped vaguely like a potato. We agreed we were both operating at peak holiday performance.

The following days settled into a rhythm so gentle it barely qualified as rhythm at all. Morning coffee on the deck, watching the light change on the mountains across the fjord. A slow stroll to the nearest shop for provisions, which inevitably took three times longer than necessary because I kept stopping to photograph wildflowers I could not identify and had no intention of learning. Afternoon reading in patches of sunlight that moved across the cottage like a lazy cat. Evening meals cooked without enthusiasm or ambition, eaten while the sky performed its lengthy Scandinavian fade from blue to grey to that particular Norwegian pink that seems to last for hours.

I had packed hiking boots with the earnest intention of conquering local trails. They remained in the car, sulking. I had downloaded podcasts about Norwegian history. They went unlistened. Somewhere in my bag sat a guidebook with pages marked about attractions within reasonable distance. The bookmarks stayed put.

There was one afternoon of mild exertion when we walked perhaps a mile along the shoreline path, finding a small pebble beach where we sat for two hours throwing stones into water that swallowed them without comment. I felt the strange, guilty pleasure of complete pointlessness. No destination, no improvement, no story to tell later beyond "we threw stones and it was lovely."

On our final morning, I woke early and took my coffee back to that deck chair. The sun was already warm, promising another day of glorious nothing. I thought about all the holidays where I had rushed from sight to sight, collecting experiences like stamps, returning home more tired than when I left. There is something to be said, I decided, for simply being present in a beautiful place and refusing to make more of it than that.

The seagull returned, presumably to check whether I had learned anything about navigation. I raised my cup to it in what felt like mutual understanding.