I had barely pulled off the ferry at Visby when the satnav decided to take me on a scenic tour of every single roundabout in town. By the time I found the right lane for the little road towards Vaenge it was already past teatime and my stomach was making its feelings known. The final turn was marked by a wonky wooden sign half-hidden behind a lilac bush, and I nearly missed it altogether, ending up in a ditch that was more puddle than road. A kind chap on a bicycle stopped to help, introduced himself as Lars, and spent the next ten minutes explaining the best way to reverse out without getting the wheels stuck. He also gave me the name of the bakery in town that still does proper cardamom buns on a Tuesday.

Once the car was back on solid ground I followed his directions and found the little red cottage tucked behind a line of wind-bent pines. The owner, a woman called Ingrid, was waiting on the steps with a thermos of coffee and a story about how her grandfather had built the place from driftwood after the big storm of fifty-seven. She handed me the key, warned me that the back door sticks when the wind comes from the east, and then launched into a tale about the neighbour's cat that thinks it owns the garden. I was still laughing when her husband, Nils, appeared with a wheelbarrow full of kindling and asked if I played cards. Ten minutes later I was sitting at their kitchen table learning a game whose rules seemed to change every round, all while Ingrid kept topping up my mug and asking whether the British really put milk in their tea before the water.

By the time the sun dipped low enough to turn the fields gold, I had met three more locals who had wandered over for a chat. One was a retired fisherman who insisted on showing me the proper way to gut a herring using only a spoon, and another was a woman who runs the tiny library in the next village and wanted to know if I had any spare bookmarks. Every conversation circled back to the weather, the price of strawberries this year, and whether the new bakery in town would last longer than the last one. It felt less like checking into a holiday let and more like dropping in on distant relatives who had decided you were staying for supper whether you liked it or not.

As I finally carried my bag inside I caught myself wondering why I had spent the whole journey worrying about directions and ferry times when the real adventure had started the moment someone stopped to help me out of a ditch.