I have never been so grateful to see a wooden cabin in my entire life. Twelve hours after leaving Gatwick, two flights, a rental car that smelled faintly of fish, and one spectacular navigational blunder, I finally pulled up at the place I'd booked near Bjoavatnet in Bjoa, Rogaland.

The mishap? Oh, it's worth mentioning. I'd been so smug about downloading offline maps, patting myself on the back for being one of those organised travellers. What I hadn't accounted for was Norwegian road numbering and my own spectacular ability to confuse a "6" with an "8" when squinting at a tiny phone screen. So instead of the efficient coastal route, I found myself winding up what felt like a private driveway, then a gravel track, then something that was definitely just a sheep path. Three sheep looked at me with expressions of profound disappointment. I reversed for nearly a mile before finding somewhere to turn around, by which point I'd invented several new swear words and developed a deep respect for Norwegian livestock.

By the time I reached the actual property, my hands were welded to the steering wheel at ten and two. But then I stepped out of the car, and everything stopped.

The cabin sat there, all red wood and white trim, looking like something from a postcard I'd have dismissed as too perfect. Behind it, the landscape rolled away in layers I hadn't expected. I'd read "mountain view" on the listing, obviously, but there's a difference between reading it and standing there with your mouth actually slightly open while a breeze comes off the water carrying that particular clean smell you only get in places with very few people and an awful lot of nature.

The key was in the lockbox exactly where promised, which felt like a small miracle given my navigation performance. I fumbled with the code, still slightly shaking from the sheep encounter, and stepped inside.

Now, I've stayed in enough holiday rentals to be cynical about "fully equipped" kitchens. Usually this means two bent forks and a saucepan with questionable history. But I opened cupboard after cupboard and found actual proper crockery, decent knives, enough glasses that you could theoretically have friends round without anyone drinking from a mug. The living area had that particular Norwegian cabin thing going on - wood everywhere, not in a trendy gastro-pub way, but in a "this building has been sensibly constructed by people who understand winters" way. I ran my hand along the table and it was solid. Everything was solid. After months of flimsy rented flats back home, this felt almost aggressively well-built.

I made myself a cup of tea - kettle worked, another small victory - and took it out onto the terrace. The evening light was doing that prolonged golden thing it does at Norwegian latitudes, stretching across the water of Bjoavatnet and making the mountains opposite look like they were posing deliberately. A bird I couldn't identify made a noise somewhere between a shout and a laugh. I laughed back at it, which is the kind of thing you do when you're finally still after too long in transit.

I sat there until the tea went cold, which I never do. Just watching the light change and feeling the particular quiet that isn't silence exactly, but the absence of human noise. No traffic, no planes overhead, just water and wind and that bird with its excellent sense of humour.

The sheep, I decided, had probably forgiven me.