I have never been so relieved to see a wooden hut in my entire life. Twelve hours after leaving Luton, having endured a delayed flight to Oslo, a train that seemed to stop at every field and fjord along the way, and a hire car with a sat nav that developed what I can only describe as an existential crisis in the outskirts of Tonsberg, I finally pulled into Nevlunghavn. And promptly drove straight into a ditch.

Not a dramatic ditch. Not a call-the-emergency-services ditch. Just one of those shallow, gravelly ones that lurk beside Scandinavian driveways, waiting for tired Brits who are too busy gawping at the sunset bouncing off the Skagerrak to watch where they are steering. The front wheel dropped in with a gentle, almost apologetic thunk. I sat there for a moment, hands still on the wheel, wondering if I could simply live in the ditch now. It seemed easier than explaining myself to anyone.

The cottage itself saved me from this fate. It is one of those classic Norwegian hytte affairs, all dark timber and modest proportions, perched on the rocky coastline with the kind of unshowy confidence that comes from knowing you have absolutely nailed your location. Before I could even contemplate the indignity of reversing out, the neighbour appeared - a wiry chap in wellies who looked as though he had been expecting precisely this sort of incompetence. He spoke about three words of English, I speak approximately zero Norwegian, and yet within four minutes we had the car on solid ground through a combination of hand signals, a borrowed plank, and what I believe was mutual silent embarrassment on my behalf.

He wandered off without accepting the slightly melted chocolate bar I offered as thanks. I choose to believe this was cultural rather than a commentary on my choice of gratitude currency.

The first thing that strikes you about this particular cottage, once you have recovered sufficient dignity to actually enter it, is how aggressively it makes you want to become a better person. The previous owners or guests have left it spotless, which immediately established a baseline of behaviour I knew I could not maintain. There is a proper wood-burning stove that I absolutely will not operate correctly. There are fishing rods in the shed that I definitely do not know how to use. The whole place smells of pine and salt and something else I eventually identified as "Scandinavian competence."

I dumped my bags and walked the fifty metres to the water's edge, because that is simply what you do here. The coastline at Nevlunghavn is all smooth granite shelves and sudden little coves, the sort of terrain that makes you feel as though you have stumbled into a particularly tasteful outdoor furniture catalogue. A couple of local lads were launching a small boat from the slipway, moving with that effortless practicality that made my ditch incident feel even more acute. I waved. They waved back, possibly out of pity.

By evening I had managed to light the stove without setting fire to anything crucial, opened the wine I had lugged all the way from duty-free, and settled onto the terrace with a blanket and a level of contentment that felt almost suspicious. The light here lingers in that disorienting Nordic way, turning the sea progressively more silver and then suddenly pink, as if someone is slowly adjusting a dial. A ferry passed in the distance, heading somewhere I did not need to go. Somewhere behind me, in the small kitchen with its admirably straightforward arrangement of utensils, sat the ingredients for a simple dinner I had absolutely no intention of preparing with any skill whatsoever.

I thought about the ditch. I thought about the chocolate bar, now slightly more melted in my pocket. I thought about how I had spent the past year telling anyone who would listen that I needed to slow down, to stop measuring holidays by how much I managed to cram into them, to actually notice where I was for once. And here I was, in a wooden cottage on a rocky Norwegian shore, having achieved precisely nothing since arrival except becoming briefly stuck and permanently humbled.

It felt, against all reasonable expectation, like exactly the right beginning.