I have always believed that the best holidays begin with a small disaster, and our drive to Bakketun Heidal in Oppland, Norway, did not disappoint. We had been winding through the Gudbrandsdalen valley for the better part of three hours, congratulating ourselves on our excellent navigation skills, when I realised with a sinking feeling that I had been reading the map upside down. Not metaphorically. Actually upside down. My partner, who had been dozing in the passenger seat, woke to find us halfway up a logging track with nothing but spruce trees and my embarrassed silence for company.

The thing about getting properly lost in Oppland, though, is that it is rather difficult to stay that way for long. The valley draws you back in, and within twenty minutes of my sheepish three-point turn, we spotted the red wooden buildings of Bakketun Heidal sitting prettily on their hillside. The property is a collection of traditional Norwegian cabins, painted that distinctive barn-red with white trim, and ours sat slightly apart from the others with a view down towards the Heidal valley that made my navigational incompetence feel almost worthwhile.

I will confess that my first act upon arrival was not to admire the scenery. It was to sit on the small wooden deck with a cup of coffee that tasted better than any coffee has a right to, and simply breathe. The air here carries something different, a clarity that makes you aware of how much city living has quietly compromised your lungs. My partner, ever the more energetic of us, immediately set about investigating the surrounding woodland. I watched her disappear between the birch trees and made a mental note to follow eventually.

That eventually came sooner than expected. Having finished my coffee, I wandered down what I believed was a marked trail behind the cabin. It was not. Within ten minutes I found myself in a small clearing with a stream I had not seen on any map, surrounded by wildflowers I could not name, with absolutely no idea which direction I had come from. For a moment I felt the familiar prickle of mild panic. Then I heard water falling somewhere to my left, and curiosity replaced anxiety.

The waterfall, when I found it, was nothing grand. It tumbled perhaps three metres over moss-covered rocks into a pool so clear I could see every pebble on the bottom. I sat on a flat stone and waited for my partner to inevitably find me, which she did forty minutes later, following the sound of my tuneless humming. She was not cross. She had found her own discovery, a cluster of abandoned wooden bee hives tucked against a stone wall, evidence of some small farming enterprise long since given up.

We spent that first evening on our cabin deck with locally bought brunost and flatbread, watching the light change across the valley in that prolonged Norwegian way that makes sunset feel like a leisurely event rather than a rushed conclusion. We talked about our accidental discoveries, comparing notes like children trading secrets. The proper trails, the ones with signs and suggested times, could wait for tomorrow. That first day had belonged to wrong turns and unexpected clearings, to the particular joy of not knowing exactly where you are and not particularly minding.

I think there is something in the Norwegian concept of friluftsliv, that open-air living they take seriously, that accommodates the lost wanderer better than most places. The landscape does not punish your wandering. It rewards it with streams and hidden falls and the quiet evidence of lives lived simply. My upside-down map had started something I had not planned, and Bakketun Heidal, with its unpretentious comfort and its position at the edge of proper wilderness, proved the perfect base for accidental exploration.

We never did find that waterfall again on our subsequent days, though we looked. Some things, I have decided, are meant to be encountered once, by chance, and held only in memory.