I had barely parked the hire car outside our little cottage near Visby when the satnav decided to play a trick on me. One minute it was calmly announcing we had arrived, the next it was insisting we turn left into a hedge. We both laughed, but the laugh turned awkward when the key safe refused to open on the first three tries. By the time the code finally worked, the light was already turning that soft northern gold that makes everything look gentler.

Inside, the place felt instantly welcoming. A small kitchen with a proper kettle, a sofa that had clearly hosted plenty of rainy afternoons, and a bedroom window that framed the treetops rather than a road. We dropped our bags and stepped straight back out, keen to stretch our legs before the evening chill set in.

That is how we ended up on the narrow gravel track behind the cottage. It looked like a shortcut to the main road, but after ten minutes the gravel faded into grass and the trees closed in. We kept going, half expecting to come out near the sea, but instead found ourselves beside a tiny meadow dotted with old stone foundations. A handwritten sign nailed to a post said something about an abandoned croft. No fence, no ticket booth, just a quiet clearing where the grass had grown through what might once have been a doorway.

We wandered further, following a deer path that skirted a low stone wall. It led us to a shallow inlet we had never seen on any map. The water was so clear we could see the stones on the bottom, and a single rowing boat was tied to a weathered post. We sat on the bank and watched a heron lift off without a sound. It felt like we had stumbled into someone’s private memory rather than a listed attraction.

Later we followed the inlet upstream until it narrowed into a stream. The path here was barely more than a line of flattened grass, yet it brought us to a small wooden jetty half hidden by reeds. Two locals were quietly fishing from the end, and they nodded as if we belonged there. We turned back before we could overstay our welcome, but the simple nod stayed with me.

By the time we found our way back to the cottage the sky had gone pale pink. The satnav mishap that started the day now felt like the best thing that could have happened. If we had followed the main road we would never have met the heron or stood on that forgotten jetty. Instead we had spent our first afternoon getting properly lost, and the island had rewarded us with places that felt like they had been waiting quietly for someone to notice them.