I should have known the holiday was going to be interesting when I confidently marched up to what I thought was our holiday let in Rorvik, only to discover I was trying to unlock a local fisherman's shed. The actual property, a charming wooden place tucked along Naeroysund, was three doors down and mercifully unwitnessed by anyone except a very confused cat.

The drive up through North Trondelag had already tested my navigational pride. I'd insisted on taking the scenic route, which in Norway apparently translates to "roads that appear on no map known to humankind." My partner sat in blessed silence, occasionally making small noises that might have been sympathy or might have been suppressed laughter. We passed fjords that looked like they'd been painted by someone showing off, and mountains wearing their autumn colours with embarrassing grandeur. I missed every single turning I intended to take.

This proved, against all my anxious planning, to be the entire point.

The property itself was exactly the sort of understated Scandinavian comfort that makes you feel immediately inadequate about your own decorating choices. Warm wood everywhere, windows framing water and sky like deliberate artwork. But we barely dropped our bags before restlessness set in. The map I'd printed lay on the kitchen table, smug and unhelpful. I suggested a walk to "get our bearings," which is code for me pretending I know where I'm going.

We turned left where the map suggested right, following a narrow path that seemed to lead towards the water. The path became a track, then something generously described as "terrain." My walking boots, purchased specifically for this trip and previously worn only to the pub, finally met their purpose. Within twenty minutes we found ourselves at a small cove that I'm fairly certain does not officially exist. No signs, no other footprints, just smooth stones and water so clear you could watch fish making their personal decisions about where to swim. We sat on a rock and ate the emergency chocolate I'd been saving, watching a heron conduct its solitary business further along the shore.

The next morning I attempted to find a recommended coastal path and instead discovered a tiny beach accessed through what appeared to be someone's garden. I spent ten minutes in anxious retreat before realising the garden had been abandoned years ago, its fruit trees now wild and dropping apples into the grass. The beach beyond was perhaps fifty metres of perfect solitude, scattered with driftwood and the kind of smooth stones that British children fill their suitcases with despite parental warnings about luggage weight.

Getting properly lost became our accidental tradition. A wrong turning towards what I thought was a viewpoint led instead to a small lake, mirror-still and surrounded by birch trees losing their leaves in that deliberate, golden way they have. We startled a deer that looked at us with the expression of someone interrupted during a private moment. I took seventeen photographs of essentially the same tree. My partner made a small fire from gathered driftwood and we sat in silence that felt earned rather than awkward, which for us is genuinely remarkable.

The fisherman whose shed I'd attempted to burgle on arrival turned out to be our nearest neighbour, a man called Erik who spoke English in the manner of someone who learned it from watching American crime dramas. He found my mistake genuinely hilarious, which I chose to take as friendly rather than mocking. He told us about a small island visible from our property's windows, accessible only at certain tides via a causeway that disappears completely. We found it on our fourth day, having given up searching and then stumbling across it by walking in exactly the wrong direction yet again.

The island had nothing on it except sheep, who regarded us with profound indifference, and the remains of what might have been a small chapel or might have been a storage building, depending on which local story you believed. We picnicked there as the tide slowly swallowed our return route, forcing a slightly panicked wade back through water that reached my knees and my dignity simultaneously.

By the end of the week, I'd abandoned the map entirely. We found a waterfall that wasn't in any guidebook by following the sound of falling water down an unmarked track. We discovered a small harbour where three elderly men sat daily in identical chairs, doing something with nets that we never fully understood and they never explained. We ate fish we'd never heard of in a cafe that had no menu, just whatever arrived that morning.

The property's windows, which I'd initially admired for their view, became frames for our own small discoveries. Each evening we'd spot something new from the living room: a particular light on the water, a bird we'd failed to identify, the changing position of boats we were learning to recognise. The map remained on the table, increasingly irrelevant, increasingly comforting in its uselessness.

I am not a person who naturally embraces uncertainty. My default setting runs towards spreadsheets and confirmed reservations and knowing exactly where the nearest toilet is. But North Trondelag, with its indifferent signage and its endless invitation to go wrong, slowly wore down this resistance. There was something genuinely freeing in realising that the worst outcome of being lost was simply finding somewhere else you hadn't expected to be.

On our final morning, I walked out early with coffee and no particular direction in mind. I found myself at the fisherman's shed again, though this time intentionally, and stood there feeling something between embarrassment and affection. The cat appeared, apparently keeping regular hours, and we shared a moment of mutual assessment before it lost interest and I wandered on, turning down a path I'd never noticed before, wondering what I might find.