I should have known the sat nav was up to no good the moment it tried to send me through what looked like someone's back garden. There I was, winding through the Norwegian countryside in my hire car, fully confident that technology had my back. Spoiler alert: it did not.

The journey from Oslo had been grand up to that point. Proper scenery, that. Fjord-like lakes glinting between pine-covered hills, the odd red wooden house perched on a slope like it had been dropped there by a giant with questionable aim. I'd stopped once for coffee at a petrol station where the bloke behind the counter spoke better English than my nephew from Essex. All was well.

Then came Lunde. Or rather, then came the outskirts of somewhere that definitely was not Lunde. The sat nav cheerfully announced I had arrived while I sat staring at a field of sheep who seemed equally confused by my presence. One of them, a particularly judgmental-looking ewe, watched me perform a seventeen-point turn in a farm track barely wider than a supermarket aisle. I wound down the window to ask directions, realised I do not speak sheep, and carried on regardless.

This is where the magic happened, though I did not know it yet. Rather than backtrack, I took the road that looked most likely, which is of course the exact opposite of what any sensible person would do. The tarmac gave way to gravel. The gravel gave way to something that might generously be called a compacted earth track. My little hire car developed a new and exciting rattle. And suddenly, there it was: a clearing by a stream, completely unmarked on any map I had seen, with a view that made me actually say "blimey" out loud to absolutely no one.

I sat on a rock for a good twenty minutes, eating the emergency packet of digestives I keep in the glove compartment for precisely such moments of unexpected beauty. A kingfisher darted past. Some creature rustled in the undergrowth, which I chose to believe was a friendly hedgehog rather than anything with teeth. The whole place had that particular hush that only exists where human beings have not yet worked out how to charge admission.

Eventually I found the actual property, which turned out to be down a perfectly sensible road roughly half a mile from where I had been wandering. The owners, a lovely couple who introduced themselves with coffee and a knowing smile, said this happened all the time. "People always find the stream," the husband said, as if it were some local legend. "The lost people find it."

The cottage itself was exactly what you want from a Norwegian cabin: red clapboard, white trim, a deck that looked out over proper woodland. But I kept thinking about that stream. The next morning, rather than follow any recommended walking route, I deliberately went the wrong way again. Just to see.

I found a bakery in what I can only describe as a shed. A woman called Inger sold me cardamom buns that were still warm, and told me about a swimming spot the locals use, down a path marked only by a single blue paint daub on a tree. I never would have found it on purpose. The water was cold enough to take your breath clean away, then give it back with interest.

By day three, my approach had become almost deliberate incompetence. Wrong turn at the church? Excellent. Missed the turning for the supermarket? Brilliant, found a farm shop instead, sold cheese from the actual cow I could see in the adjacent field. Each mistake was a door swinging open.

There is something deeply satisfying about realising how much of your best life happens when you stop trying to get it right. I am not someone who would naturally describe myself as spontaneous. I make lists. I check weather apps with embarrassing frequency. But something about Telemark's particular brand of organised wilderness, its paths that peter out and reappear, its signage that assumes you already know where you are going, forced a different rhythm.

On my final evening, I got properly lost for the last time. The sun was dropping, I had no phone signal, and I had somehow circled back to that same stream from day one. The judgmental ewe was nowhere to be seen. I sat on my rock again, digestives long gone, and watched the light change through the pine trees. For a person who normally measures a day by tasks completed, it felt almost rebellious to count this as time well spent.

The sat nav never did work properly after that first day. I think it was embarrassed. I drove back to Oslo following actual road signs, old school, and arrived somehow both more tired and more rested than when I had left. I still have Inger's cardamom bun recipe, scrawled on the back of a receipt. I still cannot find that stream on any map, though I have looked. Some places, it seems, only exist for people who are not quite where they meant to be.