I have never been so grateful to see a wooden jetty in all my life. After six hours of driving from Stavanger, my partner and I finally rolled into Skjoldastraumen, only to discover that our holiday let was not, in fact, the charming white cottage we had been photographing for the past ten minutes. That one belonged to a very confused local who watched from his kitchen window as I attempted to wrestle a wheelie case up his garden path. Turns out our actual place was two hundred metres further on, tucked behind a cluster of birch trees, and I had simply got overexcited at the first waterside building I saw. Not my finest navigational moment.

The proper cottage, when we found it, was one of those modest wooden places that Norwegians seem to throw together with such effortless good taste. Red trim, weathered grey cladding, and a deck that jutted out towards the strait like it was stretching after a long nap. I dropped my case on the gravel, immediately felt something in my back suggest this was unwise, and stood there breathing in air that tasted of salt and pine and absolutely nothing else. The silence was almost rude. Back in Leeds you pay good money for this level of nothing happening.

We did not do much that first afternoon, and that was rather the point. The sun had decided to behave itself for once, settling into a pale blue sky with the kind of stubborn persistence that makes you suspicious. I found a deckchair that creaked ominously and declared it mine for the duration. My partner brought out tea in mismatched mugs, and we sat there watching a heron stand in the shallows with the patience of someone who has never once worried about their inbox. I opened the novel I had been carrying around since March, read three pages, and fell asleep with it on my chest. Woke up with a paperback-shaped tan line. Worth it.

The days that followed settled into a rhythm so lazy it barely qualified as rhythm. Morning coffee on the deck, watching the tide turn in the strait. The water here moves with purpose, rushing between the islands in a way that makes you understand why the Vikings got ideas. We would wander down to the small jetty, perhaps cast a line without much hope or skill, perhaps not bother at all. There is a particular pleasure in holding a fishing rod purely as a prop, as an excuse to stand still and stare at water. I caught nothing for three days, then a mackerel so small I felt obliged to apologise to it.

The locality does not demand much of you, which I found rather refreshing after years of holidays that felt like endurance events. A gentle stroll along the lanes, passing houses with grass roofs that look like they are slowly being reclaimed by a very patient nature. The occasional sheep giving you that flat, judgmental stare they have perfected. We found a small beach of smooth stones where the water was cold enough to remind you that you are alive, and warm enough in the shallows that you could pretend to be brave for a few minutes.

I had brought ambitious plans. Hiking routes printed out, recommendations for fjord excursions, a guidebook with the spine still uncracked. They stayed in the car. Something about the light here, the way it lingers late into the evening, makes urgency feel absurd. We ate simple meals, grilled fish when the weather held, read books and abandoned them, talked nonsense and comfortable silences. I realised, somewhere around day four, that I had forgotten what my office looked like. Not in a dramatic, life-changing way. Just... it had slipped my mind, like a distant acquaintance you never much liked anyway.

On our last morning I woke early, made terrible coffee, and sat on that creaking deckchair watching mist lift from the water. The heron was back, still patient, still unbothered. I thought about all the holidays where I had raced from sight to sight, ticking boxes, returning more tired than I left. This had been different. This had been permission to simply be somewhere, to let a place work on you slowly, like tide on stone. My back still hurt from that first case-wrestling incident. I did not mind at all.