I should have known the sat nav was up to no good when it tried to send me through what looked like someone's back garden in Dalen. There I was, trundling along in my hire car, fully convinced I was taking the scenic route to the Vradal Panorama, when the road simply stopped being a road and became a gravel track, then a grassy slope, then what I can only describe as a very angry sheep's personal territory.

The sheep won. I reversed half a mile with my dignity in tatters and a newfound respect for Norwegian livestock.

By the time I actually found the place, tucked above the village with views that made me forget every wrong turn, I was already half in love with Telemark. The Vradal Panorama sits there like it has been waiting specifically for people like me, people who cannot follow simple directions yet somehow stumble into exactly where they need to be.

The key was in the lockbox, which I discovered after walking round the entire property twice, checking under a flowerpot that definitely wasn't there, and finally spotting it hiding behind a downpipe like it was playing hide and seek. Classic me, really. I once spent twenty minutes looking for my glasses while wearing them.

But stepping inside, that first moment when the lake just appears through the windows, perfectly framed like a painting someone had hung specifically for my arrival, I felt that lovely little shift that happens when a holiday actually begins. The kind where your shoulders drop and you remember you don't have to be anywhere particular.

I had planned to unpack properly, maybe make a cup of tea, behave like a functioning adult. Instead I found myself wandering straight back out, down a path I hadn't noticed from the drive, and into what I later learned was just woodland that happens to belong to no particular walking route. No signs, no other footprints, no carefully maintained trail. Just trees and the occasional glimpse of water through gaps in the foliage.

That first evening I got properly lost. Not dangerously lost, not call-the-emergency-services lost, but gloriously, deliberately, happily lost. I followed a stream downward because downhill usually means something, then crossed it because a fallen tree made a convenient bridge, then realised I had absolutely no idea which side of the stream I actually wanted to be on.

I found a small clearing where someone, years ago, had clearly camped. Fire ring, a few rusted tin cans, a view of the lake that no brochure mentions because no brochure knows it exists. I sat on a rock that was probably older than my entire family tree and watched the light change until my phone battery died and I was forced to navigate by, well, more downhill and eventually the smell of someone's barbecue.

The next morning, still smug about my accidental discovery, I set out to get lost on purpose. This is the thing about staying somewhere like the Vradal Panorama, you realise quickly that the actual attraction is not having attractions. I took the car down what I thought was a road to the lake, missed the proper turning, ended up on a track that narrowed until branches scraped both sides, and emerged at a tiny beach where a local man was fishing with equipment that looked older than him.

He didn't speak English, I don't speak Norwegian, but we managed to establish through gestures and pointing that I was an idiot who had driven somewhere I shouldn't have, and that the perch were biting well today. He showed me his catch with the pride of someone who had never once needed a sat nav to validate his existence.

I thought about that a lot, driving back up to the cabin with my own tiny fish, which he had insisted I take despite my protests. How much of my life had I spent trying to get somewhere efficiently, optimally, with the fastest route and the best reviews and the proper planning? And how much better were these moments of pure, unplanned accident, the wrong turns and the dead ends and the unexpected fishermen?

The Vradal Panorama became my base for glorious inefficiency. I found a bakery by following my nose down a lane I missed twice before. I discovered a swimming spot where the water was somehow warmer than everywhere else, simply by parking where I shouldn't have and walking until I found a gap in the trees. I ate the best waffle of my life at a cafe that had no sign, no website, just a grandmother who opened when she felt like it and closed when the batter ran out.

Each evening I would return to that view, to the cabin sitting there patient and unbothered by my comings and goings, and I would feel something I can only describe as properly found. The irony is not lost on me, believe me. A woman who cannot follow GPS directions, who spent her first afternoon in Norway being outwitted by livestock, somehow spent a week finding exactly what she didn't know she was looking for.

On my final morning I walked back to that clearing by the stream, the one with the rusted cans and the ancient rock, and I left a small stone on the fire ring. Not as anything grand, just a little mark that I had been there, that getting lost had led somewhere worth remembering.

The sheep, I assume, remains undefeated.