The ferry from Copenhagen dropped us at Karlskrona in what can only be described as proper Baltic drizzle, the kind that does not bother falling so much as hovering maliciously around head height. My partner had insisted on navigating, which meant we spent twenty minutes circling a roundabout near Sturkoe while she swore blind the satnav was "having a moment." It was not having a moment. She had typed "Sturkoe" but somehow selected a fish processing depot three miles in the wrong direction. The smell of herring at half past four on a grey October afternoon is not something I shall forget in a hurry.

October in Blekinge is not a season that shouts for attention. It mutters, it suggests, it offers you a cup of coffee and leaves you to make of it what you will. By the time we found the proper turning down the gravel track, the light was already packing up for the day, that particular Swedish autumn light that seems to drain sideways rather than downwards. The trees, mostly birch and the occasional wind-bent oak, had turned the colour of old brass and were shedding with the resigned enthusiasm of something that knows winter is not a possibility but a promise.

The stuga sat where the woodland met a clearing, red paint darkened by damp, white trim that had gone slightly cream with age. A proper wood-burning stove dominated the main room, and I noted with the particular smugness of the unprepared that there was already a basket of split birch waiting beside it. My partner, still smarting from the herring incident, claimed the task of lighting it. She is not good with fires. She approaches them with too much enthusiasm and too little patience, which is precisely the wrong combination. I watched her ball up newspaper with the violence of someone wringing a neck, then stuff it beneath logs that were far too large to catch. The resulting smoke filled the room with a theatrical density that would have impressed a Victorian ghost story.

We opened every window. The October air rushed in, cold and smelling of leaf mould and distant sea, and we stood there in our jumpers, waving smoke towards the Baltic like two people signalling for rescue. I laughed until my ribs hurt, though whether at the absurdity of the situation or the simple relief of finally being still, I could not honestly say. There is something about autumn travel that strips away the performance of summer holidays. No one expects October to be glorious. You are not failing if you are not tan, if your photographs are not saturated with sunshine, if your evenings end at nine with a book rather than midnight with cocktails.

The fire eventually caught, properly this time, with smaller kindling and less ambition. We sat with mugs of tea that went tepid too quickly, watching the flames through the stove's glass door, listening to the wind move through trees that were mostly bare now. The season had turned the surrounding landscape inward. The archipelago, so busy with boats and bathers in July, lay empty and grey beyond the treeline. The small beaches we passed on our wrong turn earlier were pebble and driftwood now, the swimming platforms hauled ashore or left to winter where they floated.

I found myself unexpectedly moved by this diminishment. Summer properties like this one wear their off-season selves honestly. The outdoor furniture was stacked under a tarpaulin. The little jetty visible through the trees had no boat tied to it. Everything waited, stored, patient. We were temporary warmth in a place designed for longer hibernation.

That first evening, we walked briefly before dark, crunching through leaves on a path that led towards the water. The temperature was dropping steadily, that particular autumn cold that makes your ears ache and your cheeks feel polished. We saw no one. A deer startled somewhere in the birch scrub, white tail flashing as it turned. My partner took my hand, still slightly smoky from our earlier efforts, and we stood at the treeline looking out over water the colour of brushed steel.

Back inside, the stove had made the main room properly warm, almost too warm, that intense dry heat that only wood produces. We ate simple food, bread and cheese and soup from a jar, neither of us wanting to attempt anything ambitious after the journey and the fire and the cold. The darkness outside was complete by six, not the gradual fading of summer but the abrupt curtain-drop of northern autumn. We went to bed early, lulled by the stove's ticking cooling, the wind in the mostly bare branches, the particular silence of a place where human presence is seasonal and temporary.

I woke once in the night, disoriented by the darkness, and lay listening to my partner's breathing and the distant sound of water somewhere, tide or wind or both. The room was cold now, the fire long dead. I thought about getting up to relight it, decided against it, pulled the duvet higher instead. October in Blekinge does not coddle you. It offers shelter, beauty, solitude, but it expects you to meet it on its own terms. I fell back asleep feeling strangely grateful for this, for a holiday that asked nothing of me but presence and a certain hardy acceptance of damp and early dark.

The morning brought weak coffee, a grey light that crept rather than broke, and the discovery that I had forgotten proper shoes and would be spending the week in trainers that were not remotely waterproof. Some mistakes, I reflected, stirring powdered milk into instant, you simply have to own. The season would not change for my convenience. Neither, apparently, would my packing habits.