I have always believed that the best holidays begin with a minor disaster, and our trip to Ringebu did not disappoint. We had been driving up from Oslo for what felt like several geological epochs, the kids taking turns to ask whether we were there yet with the relentless rhythm of a dripping tap. My partner was navigating, I was at the wheel, and somewhere near Lillehammer I made the executive decision to ignore the satnav in favour of what I confidently described as "a more scenic route." This is how we ended up on a forestry track, surrounded by snow poles and a silence so complete you could hear your own mistakes echoing back at you.

The scenic route, it turned out, was not scenic in the way I had imagined. It was scenic in the sense that a documentary about Scandinavian road maintenance might be scenic. We reversed for nearly a mile before finding somewhere to turn, during which time our youngest perfected a noise somewhere between a whine and a Gregorian chant. By the time we reached the proper road to Venabygdsfjellet, my hands had adopted a permanent claw shape on the steering wheel.

Then suddenly there it was, perched among the birch trees with its red wooden walls and white trim, looking exactly like the sort of place where you might solve a murder in an Agatha Christie adaptation. The cottage sat in that particular Norwegian landscape of rolling moorland and distant peaks, the kind of terrain that makes you feel simultaneously tiny and strangely significant. I turned off the engine and we sat for a moment in the kind of exhausted silence that follows prolonged family tension.

The key was in the lockbox, which I fumbled with for several minutes while my partner filmed me for posterity. There is something deeply humbling about being defeated by a four-digit code when you have successfully navigated the M25 on a Friday evening. The door swung open eventually, and we stepped into that particular smell of wood and clean linen that only proper mountain cottages seem to possess.

The living area was all timber walls and practical Norwegian simplicity, the sort of space that immediately lowers your blood pressure. The kids shot upstairs to claim sleeping spaces with the territorial urgency of meerkats spotting a hawk. I stood by the window, watching the light change across the hillside, and felt something unclench in my chest that I had not realised was clenched.

We had not brought proper walking boots because, in my infinite wisdom, I had checked the weather app once three days prior and declared it would be "mild." It was not mild. It was the sort of fresh that makes your face feel like it has been lightly sandpapered. We attempted a stroll to the nearby tarn anyway, the children in trainers, myself in what I can only describe as fashion wellies. We turned back after twenty minutes, laughing at our own inadequacy, toes numb, spirits improbably lifted.

That evening we cooked a simple meal from supplies bought at a petrol station somewhere outside Ringebu village. Pasta with a jar of something tomato-based, eaten at the wooden table while the kids played cards and the light faded slowly outside. There was no television drama, no urgent sightseeing, no cultural enrichment beyond the quiet pleasure of being somewhere that demanded nothing from you.

I found myself reflecting, as I washed up in the compact kitchen, on how much of my holiday planning usually involves trying to extract maximum value from every moment. Here, the value was in the stillness, in the way the children argued less when there was less to argue about, in the simple ritual of drying dishes with a view of heather and sky.

We slept heavily that first night, the mountain air doing what mountain air does. I woke once, confused by the silence, and stood at the window watching a fox cross the clearing in the half-light. It paused, looked directly at the cottage, and continued on its business with the indifference of a creature that had never once worried about satnav routes or lockbox codes.

The next morning, properly booted after a trip to the sports shop in Ringebu, we walked further and saw more. But that first day, that arrival, that gentle comedy of errors and the slow unwinding that followed it, set the tone for everything after. Some holidays you earn through effort and planning. Others, like this one, simply let you in.