I had convinced myself that driving from Mora to Idre Drevdagen would be a doddle. Three hours through the Swedish countryside, I'd thought, plenty of time to admire the pine forests and perhaps spot a moose looking contemplative by the roadside. What I had not accounted for was my own spectacular talent for missing turnings. There I was, cruising past yet another identical-looking clump of birch trees, absolutely certain I was on the right road, when my phone finally admitted we were forty minutes off course and heading gamely towards Norway. The moose, presumably, were laughing.

By the time I pulled up at the holiday home, the late afternoon sun was doing that golden thing it does in Dalarna, where everything looks slightly too picturesque to be real. I tumbled out of the car, stiff-legged and mildly delirious, and promptly tripped over the wooden threshold of the cabin. My wheeled suitcase, which had behaved impeccably for six hundred kilometres, chose that exact moment to collapse sideways into a flowerbed. A brilliant start, I thought, brushing pine needles off my elbow and hoping the neighbours weren't watching. They absolutely were.

The cabin itself, though, made up for every wrong turning and every bruised dignity. A proper timber building with that rich, resinous smell that hits you the moment you step inside, the sort of scent that makes you want to cancel your return journey immediately. I dumped my bags with theatrical exhaustion and wandered straight out onto the deck, because the weather was having one of its generous moments and I had learned my lesson about wasting good Swedish summer.

Idre Drevdagen sits in that satisfying pocket of Dalarna where the landscape can't quite decide if it's proper mountains or very ambitious hills. The walking trails begin practically at your doorstep, which I discovered the following morning when I set off with a borrowed map and misplaced confidence. The local weather, I should explain, had been described to me as "changeable" by the property owner, a word I now understand to be Swedish for "will absolutely deceive you within the hour."

I had planned a gentle amble towards the lower paths, perhaps a picnic by one of the smaller lakes. The morning was glorious, warm enough that I'd optimistically left my waterproof in the cabin. Two hours in, sweating pleasantly and feeling rather smug about my fitness, I noticed the sky had turned a colour I can only describe as theatrical. The temperature dropped about ten degrees in as many minutes. What had been a pleasant stroll through heather and scattered pines became a brisk march through horizontal rain that seemed personally offended by my existence.

I squelched back to the cabin looking like something that had been fished out of a lake, my "changeable" weather having thoroughly changed. The waterproof, needless to say, was exactly where I'd left it, hanging usefully on its hook while I dripped onto the wooden floorboards. I stood there, puddle-forming, and had one of those moments of gentle self-reflection that holidays seem designed to produce. There was something almost comically predictable about it, me with my overconfidence and my abandoned rain jacket, nature doing what nature does best.

The afternoon recovered itself, as Dalarna afternoons tend to. I dried off, made an excessive amount of coffee, and wandered out again as the clouds cleared, this time properly equipped and rather more humble. The trails around Drevdagen reward the persistent, winding through forest that thins gradually to reveal proper views, the kind that make you stop walking and just stand there feeling slightly foolish for ever rushing anywhere.

I spent the remaining days walking at a pace that would embarrass a serious hiker, stopping frequently for no reason beyond the pleasure of it. The weather continued its performance, warm sunshine followed by sudden showers, and I learned to carry that waterproof like a talisman. By the end, I could read the sky with something approaching local wisdom, though I suspect the locals would still find me amusingly cautious.

On my final morning, I sat on that same deck where I'd arrived in such undignified fashion, watching mist lift from the hills. My suitcase, repaired with borrowed string, stood ready by the door. I thought about wrong turnings and collapsed luggage and rain that arrives like a personal insult, and how these become the stories you actually tell. The moose, I decided, had probably been watching the whole time, and were now composing their own anecdotes about the incompetent Englishman who couldn't read a map. I didn't mind. Some places are worth getting lost for.