We set off from the ferry terminal in Visby after what felt like an endless drive across the Swedish countryside, and by the time we reached Vallstena the sky had turned that soft evening grey that makes everything look a little sleepy. I had been the one insisting we could manage without the satnav for the final stretch, and of course we ended up on a narrow gravel track that suddenly narrowed into someone’s private drive. A startled sheep looked at us as if we had lost our minds before we reversed out, laughing at our own stubbornness while the satnav’s calm voice told us we were now four minutes late.

The house itself sat quietly behind a low stone wall, its red wooden walls glowing against the pale grass. We parked on the gravel and the first thing that hit me was the silence, broken only by a single bird calling from the nearby field. Inside, the rooms felt bright and open, with simple wooden floors that creaked in a friendly way under our boots. The kitchen still smelled faintly of fresh bread from whoever had stayed before, and I found myself standing there longer than necessary, just breathing it in.

We stepped out onto the little patio and watched the light fade over the low stone walls that mark the edge of the property. A neighbour’s dog barked once in the distance and then everything went still again. My partner wandered off to inspect the barbecue while I stayed put, suddenly aware that I had spent most of the journey worrying about timetables and now could not remember why any of it had seemed so urgent. The mishap on the track already felt like part of the story rather than a problem, the sort of small wrong turn that makes you notice how good it feels to finally arrive somewhere that asks nothing of you except to slow down.

Later we sat on the steps with mugs of tea, listening to the wind move through the trees at the back of the garden. The air carried that clean, slightly salty edge you only seem to find on Gotland, and I caught myself thinking that maybe the sheep had been right to look at us like that. We had rushed, we had got lost, and now here we were, perfectly content with nothing more exciting than watching the sky change colour.