I have never been so grateful for a pair of waterproof boots in my life, and I had not even reached the front door yet. The journey from Stavanger Airport to Rennesoy had been all winding roads and postcard views, fjords glinting in the late afternoon sun, me feeling rather smug about booking a coastal escape in Rogaland. Then I stepped out of the hire car, stretched my legs, and promptly dropped my house keys down a drainage grate. Not the keys to the holiday let, mind you, but my own keys from home, the ones I definitely needed in four days' time. There I was, flat on my stomach peering through metal bars, watching my return to Birmingham glint mockingly two feet below. A Norwegian chap walking his terrier stopped to help, produced a magnet on a string from his coat pocket like some sort of fjord-side MacGyver, and fished them out in thirty seconds flat. I have never felt more British and more useless simultaneously.

The property itself sat perched on Rennesoy with that understated Scandinavian confidence, all clean lines and enormous windows facing the water. I had planned this trip around walking, you see. Warm weather adventures along the coast, proper Nordic hiking with the sun on my back and perhaps a dramatic cliff-top picnic. The kind of thing that makes people back home sigh at your Instagram stories. I dumped my bags, pulled on my walking gear, and marched out with the enthusiasm of someone who had definitely not just been rescued by a man with a magnet.

The path down to the shoreline started promisingly enough. Rocky outcrops gave way to grassy slopes, the sea shifting between slate grey and sudden turquoise where the light caught it. I had read about the coastal trails here, how they thread between the islands with proper Viking scenery, all jagged edges and stubborn little flowers clinging to the cracks. For perhaps forty minutes I was living my best life, striding along with my flask of coffee, feeling suitably hardy and Nordic.

Then the weather turned. Not gradually, not with polite warning, but with that particular Norwegian directness. One moment sunshine, the next a wall of horizontal rain that somehow came from three directions at once. I sheltered beneath a rock overhang like a sodden seabird, watching my warm-weather adventure dissolve into something significantly more authentic. The waterproof boots, at least, earned their keep.

I squelched back to the house, changed into dry clothes, and stood at those enormous windows watching the storm roll across the fjord. It was magnificent, genuinely, in that way that makes you feel very small and rather glad of central heating. The forecast for the week showed temperatures swinging wildly, sunshine giving way to showers giving way to sunshine again, sometimes within a single afternoon. My walking plans would need flexibility, clearly, and perhaps a touch less romantic ambition.

The next morning I tried again, earlier this time, catching the cool clear light before the clouds built. The coastal path rewarded patience. I found a route along the water's edge where the rocks flattened into shelves, perfect for sitting with a sandwich and watching the ferry cut its steady line toward Stavanger. The warmth came in pockets, sun breaking through to turn the heather golden, then retreating just as quickly. I stopped trying to outsmart it and simply walked when the walking was good, retreated when it was not.

By my third day I had settled into something like a truce with Rogaland's moods. Mornings meant checking the sky with the fatalism of a fisherman, packing layers I would peel off and pull back on a dozen times. The coastal trails around Rennesoy connected to longer routes if you wanted, little red markers leading you along the shore, past boathouses and the occasional summer cottage, everything weathered to that particular Scandinavian grey that is somehow beautiful rather than depressing.

I never did get my dramatic cliff-top picnic in blazing sunshine. What I got instead was better, though it took me until my final evening to admit it. I walked out after dinner, the sky having cleared in that late northern way, everything soft and luminous. The water was still, the islands layered blue upon blue toward the horizon. My boots were muddy, my knees slightly aching from all that uneven ground, and I had never felt more properly on holiday. The magnet-wielding Norwegian would probably have taken it all in his stride, of course. I am working on that.