I have never been so grateful for a thermos of tea in my entire life. The drive down from Karlskrona had been all misty coastal views and smug satisfaction at my own excellent planning, right up until the moment I realised I had been confidently following the sat nav to entirely the wrong Braekne Hoby. Forty minutes of increasingly narrow forest tracks, one slightly hysterical three-point turn involving a very judgmental moose, and I finally rolled up to the actual property as the afternoon light was doing that particular Blekinge thing of turning everything golden and apologetic.

It was late September, that hinge moment when summer has definitely left the building but winter has not yet committed to arriving. The air smelled of damp leaf mulch and woodsmoke from somewhere distant, and the birch trees surrounding the cottage were in that spectacular, almost aggressive phase of yellow that makes you feel personally accused of not appreciating nature enough. I stood there with my wrong-turn thermos still clutched in one hand, door half open, and just let the particular silence of the place settle over me. Not complete silence, of course. There was the soft percussion of leaves falling, the occasional creak of the pines, and somewhere a woodpecker doing his absolute best to ruin the mood.

The cottage itself looked exactly as the pictures had promised, which in my experience of holiday lettings is roughly equivalent to winning a modest lottery. Red wooden facade, white trim, that particular Scandinavian competence of looking both rustic and somehow more put-together than my actual house. But what the pictures had not conveyed was how the season had dressed it. The climbing rose by the door was still producing a few defiant blooms, their pink almost shocking against the general autumnal brown. A rowan tree nearby had gone full decorative, heavy with berries that the local birds had apparently not yet got round to inventorying. The small wooden deck was carpeted with leaves I would later learn to stop bothering sweeping up.

I dumped my bags with the enthusiasm of someone who has spent too long being wrong about directions and went straight for the promised wood-burning stove. Here I must confess something. I am a person who has watched approximately fifty tutorials on fire-lighting and retained none of the practical information. The stove and I had a brief, humiliating courtship involving a lot of crumpled newspaper, some surprisingly aggressive kindling, and a period of sitting in increasing cold while I pretended this was all part of the plan. Eventually, stubbornness and a borrowed firelighter from the emergency supplies triumphed. The first proper warmth hit just as the last useful daylight drained from the sky, earlier than I had mentally prepared for. That is the thing about September in Blekinge. The days have a politeness about them, a sense of not wanting to overstay, and you find yourself adjusting to rhythms you had forgotten existed.

I made a supper of things from the Karlskrona supermarket that seemed appropriate to the temperature, which is to say bread, cheese, and something involving elk that I told myself was authentic. Ate it by the now properly established fire, watching through the window as the darkness became absolute and the stars did that thing they do when you are properly away from city light, which is to basically show off. The cottage, I noticed, had settled into its nighttime creaks and ticks, the wood responding to temperature changes with the conversational ease of something very old and very sure of itself.

I woke once in the night, confused by the unfamiliar depth of dark, and lay there listening to what I eventually identified as an owl conducting some kind of solo performance in the nearest birch. Went back to sleep with the particular satisfaction of knowing the morning would bring its own slow revelation, the kind of light that filters through autumn trees and makes even a kitchenette look like a place where significant thinking might happen. The wrong turn, the fire fiasco, the slightly too-early dusk, all of it felt already like part of the proper texture of being there, the seasonal bargain you make when you choose Blekinge in the in-between months. You do not get the reliable pleasures of high summer or the dramatic certainties of deep winter. You get something more provisional, more demanding of your attention, and I was finding I did not mind that at all.