I have never been brilliant at reading maps, and this became embarrassingly clear about two hours into our drive to Randsfjorden. My partner had entrusted me with the final leg of navigation, which in hindsight was like asking a goldfish to organise a dinner party. We ended up on a farm track so narrow that brambles scratched both sides of the hire car, and I had to perform a seventeen-point turn while a very patient horse watched from a neighbouring field. The horse looked disappointed in me. Fair enough, really.

When we finally found the proper turning for Ringelia, I was ready to abandon the whole walking holiday and become a hermit in that very hedge. But then the trees parted and there was the fjord, flat and silver in the late afternoon light, and I remembered why we had come. The cabin sat just where the description had promised, perched on a gentle slope with its wooden deck facing the water like someone had placed it there specifically for people who needed forgiving after navigational disasters.

The key was in the lockbox, which I managed on the third attempt while my partner made helpful comments about my fingers being too sausage-like for modern security. Inside smelled of pine and something faintly lemony, and the windows threw enormous rectangles of light across the floorboards. I immediately walked through the main bedroom to the smaller one, convinced it was the bathroom, which my partner found hilarious for the remainder of the evening. The actual bathroom was perfectly adequate, by the way, with a shower that ran satisfyingly hot and a mirror that showed me exactly how windswept I had become during my farm track adventure.

We had arrived on one of those June days that cannot quite commit to summer. The sky over Randsfjorden kept changing its mind, brightening to a hopeful blue then dimming again as clouds rolled down from the hills behind us. I had packed for warm-weather walking with optimistic thoroughness: light trousers, breathable shirts, a hat I considered rather adventurous. Standing on the deck that first evening, I noticed how the locals probably knew something I did not. The grass had that particular green that comes from proper Norwegian rain, not the feeble drizzle I was used to back home.

The next morning we set out along the shoreline path, which the property details had mentioned and which I had studied with the same poor map-reading skills that had failed me earlier. The trail wandered through birch woodland before opening onto rocky outcrops where the fjord lapped against stones worn smooth over centuries. I had imagined striding along in my hat, perhaps spotting an osprey, feeling pleasantly warm. Instead I spent the first twenty minutes with my jacket zipped to my chin, watching my breath make small clouds while my partner, who had sensibly packed a fleece, looked smug in a way that only long-term relationships can produce.

The weather turned properly by midday. What had been merely brisk became genuinely warm, the kind of sudden Norwegian sunshine that makes you understand why people put up with the darker months. I stripped off layers with the enthusiasm of someone who had nearly given up hope, and there we were: two idiots in T-shirts on a fjord shore, surrounded by wildflowers I could not name and butterflies I had never seen before. The path climbed gradually through heather and low blueberry bushes, and from the higher points we could see the water stretching northward, dotted with small boats that moved so slowly they seemed painted on.

I kept thinking about that horse. About how easily I had let one wrong turn rattle me, how quickly I had wanted to abandon the whole enterprise. Walking back toward Ringelia as the afternoon cooled again, I found myself deliberately slowing my pace. The clouds were returning, soft and grey over the western hills, and I did not mind. My legs ached pleasantly from the climb, and my adventurous hat had actually proven useful against both sun and sudden light rain.

That evening we sat on the deck with mugs of something warm, watching the fjord settle into dusk. The temperature dropped quickly, as it does there, and I pulled my smug partner's fleece around my shoulders without asking. Tomorrow we would walk further, perhaps find the small beach we had spotted from above, perhaps get properly lost again. The cabin lights glowed behind us, and somewhere an owl started calling from the birch trees. I had arrived convinced I was rubbish at holidays, at maps, at basically everything. Three days of Norwegian weather and shoreline walking had not exactly fixed my navigation, but it had reminded me that getting somewhere slightly wrong can still mean getting somewhere worth being.