I should have known the holiday was going to be eventful when I put the postcode into my sat nav and it tried to send me to a fish processing plant in Grimsby. Three hours of increasingly narrow Norwegian roads later, and I was fairly certain I'd driven past the same red barn at least twice. The mishap, though, came right at the end. I spotted what I thought was our cabin's driveway, reversed confidently into it, and promptly got the hire car stuck in a drainage ditch that had been masquerading as solid ground. A very patient farmer called Bjorn appeared from nowhere, shook his head with the weariness of a man who has rescued many incompetent tourists, and towed me out with his tractor. I arrived at the proper cabin ten minutes later, covered in mud, smelling faintly of bog water, and ready for a cup of tea that could strip paint.

The cabin itself, perched up near Favang with Kvitfjell looming behind it, immediately made the indignity worthwhile. It had that perfect Scandinavian thing going on: clean lines, enormous windows, and a deck that seemed to float above the landscape. I stood there with my tea, watching the evening light do something impossibly golden to the hills, and felt that particular smugness of having booked somewhere genuinely lovely despite your own incompetence.

The next morning I woke to what Norwegians apparently call "fine summer weather," which in British terms meant "pack a jumper and regret your life choices." I'd planned an ambitious coastal hike based on some overenthusiastic research, imagining myself striding along dramatic fjord edges like a Nordic adventurer. The reality was rather more domestic. The local weather, that fickle beast, had turned warm and almost embarrassingly pleasant by mid-morning. My heavy waterproofs stayed in the rucksack. I ended up walking for hours through meadows that smelled of wild thyme and something else I couldn't identify but wanted to bottle.

The trails around this part of Oppland aren't the dramatic clifftop affairs I'd pictured. They're gentler, winding through birch forest and opening suddenly onto views that make you stop mid-stride. I found a lake, nameless as far as I could tell, and sat on a rock eating a very squashed sandwich. A family passed on bicycles, the children singing something that sounded like a nursery rhyme but might have been a complaint about the gradient. Everything felt unhurried in that specifically Scandinavian way that makes you realise how much of your normal life is spent rushing toward something you don't particularly want.

By afternoon the weather had shifted again, as it does. Clouds gathered with theatrical speed and I felt the first spots of rain just as I was congratulating myself on my timing. I walked faster, then ran a bit, then accepted my fate and strolled the last kilometre in a state of pleasant dampness. The cabin's sauna, which I'd initially thought excessive for a summer let, suddenly seemed like the most essential feature any accommodation has ever possessed.

That evening, dry and slightly pink from the heat, I sat on the deck again and watched the weather clear as quickly as it had turned. The mountains reappeared, freshly washed. I thought about Bjorn and his tractor, about my terrible navigation, about how I'd come expecting one kind of holiday and found something quieter instead. There's a particular lesson there, I suspect, about letting places be what they are rather than what you imagined. I'm not very good at learning it, generally speaking. But sitting there, with a beer that cost slightly too much from the local shop and a view that cost nothing at all, I felt something close to peaceful.

The walking here doesn't demand to be conquered or even particularly planned. It invites you to keep going until you feel like stopping, which turns out to be a completely different proposition. I spent the rest of the week doing variations on this theme: setting out with some vague destination, getting distracted by a view or a berry patch or a sudden need to sit down, arriving somewhere else entirely. The warm weather held, mostly, with occasional reminders that Norwegian summer is a negotiation rather than a guarantee.

On my last morning I walked up toward Kvitfjell proper, following a trail that started properly and gradually became more suggestive than defined. I reached a ridge and could see the cabin below, small and precise as a model. The car was still in one piece, remarkably, though I gave the drainage ditch a wide berth on my departure. Some lessons, at least, do stick.