The satnav gave up on us somewhere past Haukeli, which should have been my first clue that this holiday would involve a bit more adventure than I'd bargained for. I'd been bragging to my partner about my "excellent sense of direction" ever since I'd managed to navigate us out of a Milton Keynes car park without crying, so naturally I missed the turning to Rauland and carried on merrily towards absolutely nothing for a solid twenty minutes. The road got narrower, the trees got thicker, and eventually I had to perform a seventeen-point turn on a bridge that felt roughly the width of a dinner plate, while a local in a battered Volvo watched from behind with the patient expression of someone who'd seen this exact scene approximately four thousand times before.

We found the cabin eventually, tucked among birch and spruce with a view down towards the lake that made my ridiculous detour feel almost worthwhile. Almost. The key was in the lockbox exactly where the instructions said, though I'd managed to convince myself we'd been sent the wrong code and stood there jabbing numbers like a confused burglar until my partner gently took over and opened it first try.

Inside smelled of pine and something else I couldn't place, something clean and cold that I now realise was simply Norwegian air doing its thing. The wood burner dominated the living room like a friendly robot, and I immediately decided I was going to be brilliant at lighting it. Reader, I was not brilliant at lighting it. Three smoke alarms, one opened window, and a small crisis of confidence later, my partner once again stepped in with the practised patience of someone who has watched me fail at basic domestic tasks for many years. The fire caught eventually, and I sat there feeling both triumphant and slightly pathetic, which I've come to recognise as my default holiday emotion.

What struck me most that first evening was the silence. Not the uncomfortable silence of an awkward dinner party, but something vast and generous, broken only by the occasional creak of the cabin settling and what I later learned was a ptarmark calling somewhere on the hillside. I kept waiting for traffic noise, for planes overhead, for the general hum of other people's lives pressing in. It never came. Instead I found myself talking more quietly, as if the landscape itself had asked me nicely to keep it down.

We'd planned various excursions for the week, of course. I'd printed maps and everything, colour-coded by day and laminated with the enthusiasm of someone who doesn't get out much. But that first morning, still slightly fuzzy from the journey and perhaps one glass of aquavit too many, we simply wandered. No destination, no laminated itinerary, just boots on gravel and the vague intention of finding the lake we'd seen from the window.

The path petered out after ten minutes, which would normally have sent me into a mild panic. Instead we pressed on through thinning birch woodland until the ground opened unexpectedly into a small clearing I'd never have found deliberately, a pocket of meadow with wildflowers I couldn't name and a view across the water that stopped both of us mid-sentence. My partner sat on a rock. I stood there like a fool with my mouth slightly open. Neither of us spoke for what felt like a long time, though perhaps it was only minutes. I've never been good at measuring silence.

Later that afternoon, properly lost by any reasonable definition, we stumbled across a tiny beach of smooth stones where someone had built a rough fire pit and left a rusted kettle hanging from a tripod of driftwood. It felt like discovering a secret, though it was probably just a local fishing spot that everyone except us knew about. I found myself wondering about the person who'd dragged that kettle there, what they'd cooked, whether they'd sat alone or with someone worth the effort. The whole scene had the quality of something I'd imagined rather than found, and I kept half-expecting to round a corner and find myself back at the cabin with none of it real.

We made our way back eventually, following a stream downhill in the general direction of where we thought we'd started. The cabin appeared suddenly between trees, almost as surprised to see us as we were to see it. I lit the fire that evening with only minimal assistance, and we sat with mugs of something warm while the light faded and the ptarmark started up again from its invisible perch.

I've thought about that clearing often since returning to the usual noise of things. Not with any particular wisdom to share, because I don't think there is one. Just the memory of being somewhere I hadn't planned to be, and finding it better than anywhere I'd intended. My laminated maps are in a drawer somewhere. I suspect they'll stay there.