I had promised myself I would not rely on Google Maps for the final stretch of the journey to Kyrkjebygdheia, which tells you everything you need to know about how that went. Three hours out of Oslo, full of smug confidence and petrol station coffee, I turned where the sat nav told me to turn and promptly found myself on a track that grew increasingly agricultural until I was essentially driving through someone's back garden in Telemark. A very polite sheep watched me execute a seventeen-point turn. I waved at it like that would help.

The actual road, when I found it, wound through pine forest that seemed to get taller and more judgmental the further I went. Then suddenly the trees opened up and there was the cabin, perched on its hillside with a view down towards Nisser lake that made me forget entirely about the sheep incident. For about four seconds. Then I remembered I still had to reverse the car into the designated parking spot, which involved another performance for the local wildlife.

I had arrived in late June armed with an ambitious itinerary of walks. The forecast had been consistently promising. Sun, mild temperatures, that soft Scandinavian light that makes every photograph look like you actually know what you are doing with a camera. I dumped my bags, changed into my walking boots with the enthusiasm of someone who has been sitting in a car for far too long, and set off down the track towards what I had identified as a promising coastal path along the lake shore.

The thing about Norwegian weather, I was about to learn, is that it treats forecasts more as gentle suggestions than binding agreements. I had done perhaps twenty minutes of pleasant strolling, admiring the way the water lapped against the granite shoreline, when the sky in the west turned a colour I can only describe as personally offended. The first drops arrived with theatrical timing, just as I was congratulating myself on having packed light.

I am not someone who gives up easily. This is a flaw, not a virtue. I pressed on, reasoning that a bit of drizzle adds atmosphere, that I was wearing quick-dry fabric, that surely it would pass. The drizzle became rain. The rain became something that felt almost targeted. I found myself squelching back towards the cabin with the realisation that my waterproof jacket, purchased in a hurry from a high street chain, had apparently been designed for a different concept of water altogether.

The next morning I woke to fog so thick I could barely see the trees at the edge of the clearing. My carefully planned longer hike to a viewpoint further along the coast was clearly not happening. I made coffee and stood on the deck in my socks, watching the mist roll across the lake in slow, deliberate waves. There was something almost comical about my disappointment. I had come for sweeping vistas and strenuous exercise, and instead I was getting a masterclass in atmospheric conditions.

By mid-morning the fog had lifted to a sort of general greyness, and I decided that a proper walker adapts. I found a shorter route through the woodland behind the cabin, a narrow track that wound between birch and spruce, occasionally opening onto small clearings where the undergrowth was thick with wild strawberries. I walked slowly, deliberately, stopping whenever something caught my attention. A woodpecker somewhere overhead. The particular quality of light when the sun almost breaks through cloud.

That afternoon the weather turned again, properly this time. I sat on the rocks by the water's edge in actual sunshine, boots off, eating the sandwiches I had packed for a much more demanding expedition. The lake was calm enough to reflect the sky, and I could see the far shore clearly for the first time since my arrival. I thought about how I had rushed the first walk, how I had treated the landscape as something to be conquered rather than experienced, how my obsession with covering distance had nearly made me miss the particular pleasure of moving slowly through a place that does not hurry.

I spent the rest of the week following a similar pattern. Early starts when the weather allowed, wandering the coastal paths with proper attention to the changing light on the water, the way the granite wore smooth under centuries of ice and waves. When the rain returned, as it did with reliable unpredictability, I retreated to the cabin's deck with a book and the satisfaction of knowing I had not let my stubbornness ruin another afternoon.

On my final day I walked a longer loop that took me along the shore and then up through forest to a small ridge with views back towards where I had started. The sun came out as I reached the top, and I stood there long enough to feel slightly foolish about my arrival day drama, about the sheep, about the jacket that was even now drying on the cabin's railing. The Telemark landscape does not care about your plans. It simply exists, in all its changeable, frustrating, occasionally glorious reality, and the best you can do is show up with decent boots and a willingness to be surprised.

I drove back to Oslo by the proper road, which took barely half the time.