I should have known the holiday had truly begun when I managed to leave my walking boots on the train at Lillehammer. There I was, standing on the platform at Ringebu with one bag, one child, and zero sensible footwear, watching my only pair of decent shoes disappear towards Oslo. My wife gave me that look. You know the one. The look that says "I love you, but honestly, how do you function?"

The drive from Ringebu station to Venabygd was gorgeous enough to soften even my mild embarrassment. We wound through valleys where the birch trees were doing that shimmering thing they do in late summer, and every now and then a proper mountain would peek through like it was checking we were paying attention. The hire car smelled faintly of the previous driver's dog, which my daughter declared "absolutely rank" before promptly falling asleep.

Finding the cottage was straightforward enough, though Norwegian satnav pronunciations deserve their own comedy special. We turned up a gravel track that got progressively more adventurous, and there it was: a traditional timber place with that classic red-brown stain that makes every Scandinavian holiday photo look impossibly tasteful. Ours, I noticed with relief, had a slightly lopsided woodshed and a garden that had clearly given up on being manicured about thirty years ago. Perfect. Nothing worse than a holiday home that makes you feel bad about your own domestic standards.

The key was in the lockbox, which I fumbled with for several minutes while my family watched from the car, presumably wondering if I would also lose the code. Inside, the smell hit first: that particular blend of pine, old wood, and something faintly reminiscent of the nineteen-eighties that every proper Norwegian cabin seems to possess. My daughter announced it "smells like Granny's attic but in a good way," which I thought rather poetic for a twelve-year-old.

The living room was all low ceilings and worn furniture that had clearly hosted decades of card games and rainy afternoons. Someone had left a jigsaw puzzle half-finished on a side table, which I found oddly touching, like we'd been invited to continue a conversation started by strangers. The wood-burning stove dominated one corner, black and slightly dented, looking enormously pleased with itself. My wife immediately began planning which evenings would require a fire, despite it being August and perfectly mild.

I discovered the boots situation was actually worse than anticipated. The cottage information folder helpfully noted "excellent walking terrain directly from the door," which would have been thrilling had I anything to walk in beyond canvas trainers I'd bought in a Brighton emergency three years prior. My daughter found this hilarious and spent a good ten minutes doing exaggerated impressions of me slipping on imaginary moss.

The kitchen, though, saved my dignity somewhat. Properly equipped in that unshowy Scandinavian way, with a kettle that boiled with theatrical efficiency and cupboards containing mysterious Norwegian staples we immediately began investigating. My wife found some waffle iron I'd failed to notice, and within an hour we were eating afternoon waffles with brown cheese, which tastes approximately like caramel had a baby with a savoury cracker and nobody can quite explain why it works.

Standing on the small wooden deck that evening, trainers still damp from an ill-advised attempt at the nearby stream, I watched the light do that prolonged Scandinavian fade where dusk takes approximately four hours. The mountains across the valley turned progressively more purple, and somewhere a dog barked with the satisfied rhythm of a creature that has never considered footwear important.

My boots were apparently being held at lost property in Oslo. I found I did not much care.