I have never been particularly good at following sat nav instructions, and my journey to Soelvesborg/Hoervik proved this beyond any doubt. Somewhere around Karlskrona I managed to confuse a left turn with a very enthusiastic straight-on, which deposited me down a gravel track flanked by pine trees that looked increasingly judgmental. My hire car, a cheerful red Volvo that I had already named Ingrid, rattled over potholes while I muttered apologies to her suspension. Twenty minutes later, with phone signal having abandoned me entirely, I stumbled upon a small wooden sign pointing toward what I later learned was a forgotten fishing hamlet called Tjaerby. There was no reason to stop, except that a ginger cat sat in the middle of the track washing its face with the absolute confidence of something that owned the place. I stopped. The cat did not move. This, I decided, was my introduction to Blekinge.

By the time I actually reached the holiday home in Hoervik, the afternoon had softened into that particular Scandinavian light that makes everything look slightly golden and forgiving. The property sat among birch trees, painted the traditional Falun red with white trim, and possessed a veranda where someone had left a pair of wellington boots arranged with the casual precision of a still-life painting. I later discovered these belonged to no one; they were simply part of the house's character, like the creaking third stair or the kitchen drawer that required a specific wiggle to open. I felt immediately that I had arrived somewhere that did not hurry.

The following morning, determined to make amends for my navigational incompetence, I set out with a proper map and the optimistic intention of visiting Soelvesborg's famous bridge. Instead, I took another wrong turning near the harbour and found myself walking along a narrow path between granite outcrops and dense juniper bushes. The path ended at a small clearing where an elderly man sat on an upturned boat, smoking a pipe and watching a heron stand motionless in the shallows. We nodded at each other in the manner of people who understood that some silences did not require interruption. I sat on a rock for perhaps half an hour, watching the heron make its patient calculations, and felt something in my chest loosen that I had not realised was tight.

That accidental path became my obsession. Each day I deliberately set out without clear destination, allowing Ingrid to carry me down tracks that grew progressively narrower and more improbable. I discovered a bakery in a converted barn where an Estonian woman made cardamom buns that tasted of my grandmother's kitchen, though my grandmother was from Wigan and never baked anything in her life. I found a swimming spot where locals gathered at improbable hours, descending wooden steps into water that took your breath for three full seconds before becoming glorious. I stumbled upon a flea market in someone's garden, where I bought a chipped enamel mug that I treasure beyond all reason.

The holiday home itself rewarded this approach to aimlessness. What I initially thought was merely a convenient base revealed itself to be a place of small, accidental pleasures. The outdoor shower, which I assumed would be bracing, turned out to have surprisingly civilised water pressure. The barbecue area, tucked behind a windbreak of wild roses, became my evening headquarters. I never once managed to cook fish properly, producing instead a series of charred offerings that I ate with stubborn pride and excessive amounts of dill sauce from the local ICA supermarket.

On my final morning, I attempted to revisit the heron spot and got lost again, naturally. This time I found a different clearing, different rocks, different silence. A family of ducks paddled past in single file. I laughed aloud at my own ridiculous inability to navigate, at the sheer accumulated improbability of my holiday, at how completely I had failed to do any of the things I had vaguely planned. I thought about how often I arrive somewhere with expectations arranged like furniture, and how rarely I permit myself to simply see what is actually there.

I drove back to Ronneby airport with Inrid's petrol tank nearly empty, my enamel mug rolling around in the footwell, and a strong conviction that I would remember this particular wrong turning for a very long time.