I have never been so relieved to see a wooden cabin in my entire life. After seventeen hours of driving, two ferries, one argument with a sat nav that clearly had a grudge against Denmark, and a deeply misguided attempt to pronounce "Solvesborg" at a petrol station in Malmo, I finally pulled into Norje Boke. And promptly reversed into a recycling bin.

The bin survived. My dignity did not. A woman walking her dog stopped to watch the whole performance, which I feel was unnecessary. She did not even pretend to look away. I waved cheerfully, as if this was precisely how I had planned my grand arrival, then spent five minutes trying to disentangle a plastic bottle from my rear wiper blade.

The cabin itself sat among pine trees so perfectly spaced they looked almost smug about it. Red wood, white trim, a little porch with two chairs facing nothing but forest and the faint glint of what I later learned was Hannasjon lake. It was exactly the sort of place that makes you feel slightly inadequate about your own life choices. Why do I not live here? Why do I own a flat above a kebab shop in Croydon?

I fumbled with the key box, dropping the code sheet twice because my hands had forgotten how to function after gripping a steering wheel for the better part of two days. The door opened with that particular resistance that wooden doors develop in humid places, the kind that says "I have been here longer than you and I am not changing now." Inside smelled of pine and something faintly vanilla, which I choose to believe was intentional rather than a previous guest's air freshener.

The main room had one of those wood-burning stoves that look decorative until you actually need them. I ran my hand along the kitchen counter, which was clean in that slightly apologetic Scandinavian way, as if cleanliness were a modest virtue rather than an achievement. The windows were enormous. I mean properly enormous. Standing there in my crumpled driving clothes, I felt like I was in a wildlife documentary, waiting for David Attenborough to whisper something about my natural habitat being "the tired British motorist, newly arrived and slightly feral."

I made coffee using the machine provided, which was one of those situations where you press buttons hopefully and trust that Nordic engineering will sort itself out. It did. I took my cup onto the porch, recycling bin incident behind me, and sat in one of those chairs. The dog woman had moved on. The pines moved slightly in a breeze I had not noticed from inside. Somewhere distant, a motorboat made that particular puttering sound that carries across water in a way that makes it impossible to judge distance.

I thought about the journey. The sat nav betrayal. The ferry coffee that tasted of regret. The moment somewhere past Gothenburg when I genuinely considered abandoning the car and starting a new life as a lorry driver. All of it had led to this: a wooden chair, decent coffee, and the particular quality of light that happens when northern sun filters through pine needles onto red paint.

I stayed there until my coffee went cold. It was not a profound moment, exactly. I did not have any revelations about the meaning of life. But I did think, with the particular clarity that exhaustion sometimes brings, that I had absolutely no idea what I was doing with my life back home, and that this ignorance had never felt so completely acceptable.

The recycling bin and I had made our peace by morning.