Getting to Sorvagen felt like one of those journeys where you start to wonder if you've accidentally signed up for an expedition rather than a family holiday. We'd flown to Bodo, caught the ferry to Moskenes, and then I confidently told the kids we were "just around the corner now" for a solid forty minutes of winding coastal road. The Lofoten Islands have a rather flexible definition of "around the corner," it turns out.

The real comedy started when we finally pulled up to the cottage. I'd been banging on about self-catering independence for weeks, how we'd cook proper meals, live like locals, all that. First thing I did? Walked straight into the low wooden beam above the front door. Not a gentle tap either. A proper, cartoonish clonk that made my daughter drop her phone and my son actually look up from his. There's something deeply humbling about arriving somewhere staggeringly beautiful and immediately introducing yourself to the timber frame with your forehead. I stood there rubbing my head while a seagull laughed at me from the neighbouring roof. At least it sounded like laughter. Probably was.

The cottage itself, once I'd recovered my dignity, had that immediate sense of rightness you sometimes get with proper Norwegian coastal places. Not trying too hard, not polished for show. Just solid, weathered wood, a red exterior that had softened to something almost pink in places, and windows that framed the water like someone had carefully planned it that way. The kids shot off to claim bedrooms, which apparently required the same strategic negotiation as a UN treaty, while I stood in the kitchen-living area and finally let the journey drop from my shoulders.

What struck me first was the light. Even in late afternoon, it had that particular quality you get up here, bouncing off the water and coming through the windows at angles that made everything look slightly more significant than it perhaps was. Our ordinary Tesco travel mugs looked almost artistic on the windowsill. I caught myself thinking this, which was the first sign I was properly unwinding, or possibly still concussed from the beam.

I made tea with the kind of concentration usually reserved for surgery, still in that post-travel fog where simple tasks require disproportionate effort. The kitchen had everything we needed without being flashy. Basic but decent pans, a kettle that didn't take an age, that particular smell of a place that's been closed up for a bit but nothing a few open windows wouldn't sort. I kept looking up from the teabags to the view, which was frankly rude in its beauty. Mountains dropping straight to the sea, little pockets of settlement clinging to the coastline, the whole thing looking like someone had described Norway to a talented painter and they'd got slightly carried away.

My wife found the outdoor seating area while I was still nursing my tea and my dignity. She came back with that particular expression she gets when she's discovered something that will become "our spot" for the week. Sure enough, we spent that first evening sitting out with jumpers on, because even summer evenings here have a bite, watching the light shift across the water and not saying much. The kids emerged eventually, treaty signed, and we ate bread and cheese for dinner because nobody could face a supermarket run, and somehow it felt exactly right.

That first night, lying in bed listening to the unfamiliar quiet, I thought about the beam. About how I'd been so keen to arrive capable and organised, and instead had literally stumbled through the door. But Sorvagen didn't seem to mind. The place asked nothing of us except to be there, to settle in slowly, to let the journey become the holiday rather than just its prelude. I touched my still-tender forehead and smiled in the darkness. Sometimes the best arrivals are the slightly bruised ones.