I should have known the sat-nav was up to no good the moment it tried to send me down what looked like a goat track outside Dalen. Twelve hours of driving from Newcastle, including a ferry crossing where I'd definitely had one too many coffees, and there I was, arguing with a woman who sounded suspiciously calm about directing me into a fjord. The mishap, though, came ten minutes later, when I finally found the proper road to Bandaksli and promptly reversed into a wooden post while trying to photograph a particularly handsome sheep. Tiny dent in the hire car. Enormous blow to my dignity. The sheep looked unimpressed.

The journey to Telemark had been spectacular in that slightly punishing Scandinavian way. Forests so dense they looked almost rude in their lushness, mountains that kept peeking through mist like someone playing coy, and the Bandak Lake stretching out in impossible shades of grey-blue. By the time I crunched up the gravel drive to the cabin, my back was complaining, my neck had developed a permanent tilt from motorway driving, and I smelled strongly of ferry cafeteria. Not my finest hour.

Then I opened the car door. Or rather, I tried to, because the dent had slightly jammed it, which meant my grand arrival involved me climbing out of the passenger side like a burglar fleeing the scene. But standing there, breathing in air that tasted of pine and cold water and absolutely nothing else, I felt something shift. The cabin sat nestled among trees with that particular Norwegian confidence, all wood and glass and sensible Scandinavian angles, as if to say, yes, I am attractive, but I am also practical, and isn't that better?

The key was in the lockbox exactly where promised, which already felt like a minor miracle after my navigational disasters. The door opened with a satisfying weight, and I stepped into warmth and the faint, comforting smell of a place that has been properly looked after. The living area opened up before me, all exposed beams and windows that framed the lake like a painting someone had hung with excessive generosity. I stood there with my ridiculous rucksack, still wearing one shoe because the other had somehow wedged under the passenger seat during my undignified exit, and I laughed. Actually laughed, out loud, to nobody.

The kitchen was immediately inviting in that way holiday kitchens rarely are - properly equipped, not the usual collection of blunt knives and mysterious utensils. I could see myself making terrible coffee there at dawn, staring out at water that would probably be steaming slightly in the morning cold. The bedrooms were simple, clean, with that particular stillness good cabins have, as if the building itself is resting between guests.

I made my way down to the water's edge as the light was starting to soften, still in my one-shoe state because dignity was clearly not happening today. The lake lay perfectly flat, reflecting mountains I couldn't name, and a small boat bobbed at the private jetty with what I can only describe as optimistic readiness. I thought about the sheep, and the sat-nav, and the dent I would have to explain in broken Norwegian to a hire car person tomorrow. I thought about how I had driven all this way partly to escape a job I wasn't enjoying and a flat that always smelled of someone else's cooking.

Standing there, with my feet getting damp and one shoe in my hand like some strange lake ritual, I realised the mishaps hadn't ended the journey. They had been the journey, or part of it anyway. The wrong turn that showed me a waterfall I wouldn't have seen. The sheep that now featured in three blurry photographs. The dent that would become a story instead of a disaster. The cabin waited behind me, warm and solid and entirely unconcerned with my various failures of navigation and dignity.

I went back inside, found the other shoe, made that terrible coffee, and sat by the window as the light finally faded over Bandak. Somewhere out there, I suspected, that sheep was sleeping peacefully, unaware it had featured so prominently in someone's small epiphany. Tomorrow I would deal with practicalities. Tonight I would simply sit, and breathe, and be grateful that sat-navs are fallible and that wooden posts, apparently, are not.