I have never been so relieved to see a wooden cabin in my life. After a three-hour drive from Stavanger that included one wrong turn, a near-miss with a sheep that clearly owned the road, and the realisation that I had packed three left wellies and no right ones, I finally pulled up at the Fister holiday home and promptly tripped over my own feet trying to get out of the car. The gravel drive crunched beneath me as I went down, and a friendly local walking past with his dog just nodded as if this happened to everyone. I suspect it does.

The first thing that struck me was the smell. Not the sheep, though there was a lingering hint of that from the car journey. No, it was proper coastal Norway: salt air, pine, and something faintly fishy that I chose to believe was just the sea being enthusiastic. The cabin sat there looking terribly pleased with itself, all red wood and white trim, with a view of the fjord that made my knees weak. Or perhaps that was still the gravel incident.

I had arrived in late June with grand plans. The weather app had promised me a solid week of sunshine, and I had packed accordingly: shorts, t-shirts, and a sun hat that made me look like an overgrown schoolchild. My intention was to walk every coastal path within reach, to stride along like a proper Nordic explorer, perhaps even break into the occasional jog if nobody was watching. The Fister area, I had read, offered marvellous hiking along the shoreline, with trails winding through heather and rock, past little coves where you could stop and dip your toes in the North Sea if you were brave or foolish enough.

The first morning, I woke to grey skies and a wind that seemed personally offended by my sun hat. I put it on anyway, out of stubbornness, and set off towards the coastal path that runs south from the village. Within twenty minutes, the hat had blown into a gorse bush and I had discovered that "mild breeze" in Norwegian weather forecasts translates to "attempting to knock you off your feet" in English. I retrieved the hat, wedged it in my pocket, and pressed on, telling myself that this was character building.

The path was magnificent, even in the gloom. Dark rock formations rose from the water, waves slapped against the shore with theatrical enthusiasm, and the heather clung to the hillside in determined purple patches. I walked for perhaps two hours, feeling terribly rugged, before the first proper rain arrived. Not a gentle English drizzle, mind you, but a sudden, vertical downpour that soaked through my "water-resistant" jacket in approximately forty seconds. I sheltered beneath a rocky overhang, watching my breath mist in front of me, and had one of those moments of clarity that only come when you are slightly miserable and very damp.

I am not, I realised, a person who enjoys suffering for its own sake. There is a certain pride in pushing through bad weather, in returning to your cabin looking like a shipwreck survivor and declaring the experience "bracing." But as I stood there, water trickling down my neck, I admitted to myself that I would much rather be warm and dry and still able to appreciate where I was. The landscape did not require my discomfort to be valid. It would look just as dramatic through a window with a cup of tea in hand.

The rain eased eventually, and I squelched back to the cabin, where I changed into every dry item of clothing I possessed and spent the afternoon on the covered terrace, wrapped in a blanket that smelled faintly of previous guests' adventures. From there, I could still see the fjord, still watch the light shift across the water, still feel the sense of being somewhere properly wild without needing to be properly wild myself.

The following days brought a mix of weather that I have come to think of as typically Norwegian: bright mornings that tempted me out, sudden showers that sent me scurrying back, and one miraculous afternoon of genuine warmth where I did manage a proper coastal walk in just a t-shirt, albeit with a jumper tied round my waist and one eye permanently fixed on the horizon for incoming clouds. I learned to pack layers, to never trust a forecast beyond the next two hours, and to carry chocolate as emergency morale support.

By the end of the week, I had walked less than planned but seen more than expected. The changing weather forced me to slow down, to sit and watch rather than march and conquer. I spotted otters from the terrace one misty morning, watched fishing boats return with their catch on a clear evening, and had several conversations with that same local man and his dog, who seemed to approve of my more sensible approach.

On my final day, the sun finally committed to shining. I walked the coastal path one last time, properly dressed this time, and stood on a rocky outcrop looking out at the islands scattered across the fjord like broken biscuits. The wind still blew, but I had a proper coat now, and a hat that stayed on. I thought about my three left wellies, my abandoned sun hat, my various attempts at being the sort of person who laughs at bad weather. I was not that person, and that was perfectly alright. The cabin had not minded. The coast had not minded. Only my pride had suffered, and even that had mostly dried out with the help of a good blanket and several cups of tea.

I drove back to Stavanger with both wellies from the same pair, a slight sunburn from that final walk, and a newfound appreciation for holiday plans that bend rather than break.