I have never been particularly good at reading maps, which is how I found myself standing in a petrol station forecourt near Askersund, frantically jabbing at my phone while my other half sighed in that particular way that suggests this is not, in fact, the first time. We had been driving up from Orebro through countryside so relentlessly pretty it felt almost rude to keep looking, and somehow I had managed to confuse "turn left at the church" with "turn left at the thing that is definitely not a church." The satnav had given up on us entirely. A very patient Swedish man in a Volvo pointed us back in roughly the right direction, and twenty minutes later we were bumping down a gravel track towards Naerkesberg, my cheeks still warm with the particular shame of being rubbish at basic navigation.

The cottage sat among birch trees with that particular Scandinavian stillness that makes you want to whisper for no reason. It was yellow, properly yellow, the colour of custard creams, with a little wooden deck and windows that caught the afternoon light in a way that made everything inside glow. I stood there with my ridiculous oversized suitcase and felt that lovely, rare thing: the immediate sense that doing absolutely nothing here would constitute a perfectly respectable afternoon.

And that is precisely what we did. The first day, at least. The deck chairs were already in position, angled towards a patch of garden that caught the sun from midday until it dipped behind the trees. I had brought three books, which was optimistic for a week but turned out to be barely sufficient. There is something about Swedish summer light that makes reading feel like an active pursuit rather than mere laziness. The pages seem to turn themselves. I finished an entire novel before dinner, which I announced with the pride of someone who had actually achieved something, though my only real exertion had been reaching for another cup of coffee.

The lake was a short stroll down a path bordered with wild strawberries, the kind you always tell yourself you will pick and never do. We did not pick them either. We looked at them, noted their existence, and continued to the water's edge where there was a small jetty and the kind of silence that makes you aware of your own breathing. I am not much of a swimmer, preferring the dignity of remaining upright, but I did dangle my feet and contemplate the universe in that vague way that water seems to demand.

Askersund itself we visited twice, both times on foot from the cottage, which made us feel pleasingly virtuous about our minimal carbon footprint while actually just being too lazy to move the car. It is a proper little town, all wooden houses and a harbour where people who actually know what they are doing with boats potter about looking competent. We bought bread from a bakery where nobody spoke English and we communicated through the international language of pointing and hopeful smiling. The bread was excellent, which I took as validation of our entire approach.

What I had not expected, and what stayed with me, was how quickly the urge to achieve dissolved. No need to see everything, photograph everything, tick boxes. The joy was in the repetition: morning coffee on the deck, a slow walk, perhaps a brief exploration of somewhere nearby, then back to the chairs and another book. My other half took up the crossword with a dedication that suggested retirement was calling early. I napped without guilt, which for me is practically a personality change.

On our final evening, we sat out until nearly eleven, the sky still holding light in that endless Swedish way, and I thought about how I had arrived flustered and map-less and slightly defensive, and how none of that mattered now. The cottage had done what good places do: it had slowed me down without my really noticing. I had done very little, and it had been absolutely enough.