I have always believed that the best holidays begin with a minor disaster, and our trip to the Hoeoer/Ringsjoen in Skane did not disappoint. We had been driving up from Malmo, full of that smug energy you get when you think you have planned everything perfectly, when I realised I had left my walking boots on the kitchen table in Brighton. Not in the boot of the car. Not in the wrong bag. On the actual kitchen table, next to the toaster, probably being judged by the cat. My partner gave me one of those looks that managed to convey both pity and mild triumph, as he had remembered his, and we spent the next twenty minutes in a petrol station outside Lund debating whether to buy cheap trainers or embrace the Swedish countryside in flip-flops.

We arrived at the property in the late afternoon, and I will be honest, the first thing I did was check the wardrobe to see if some previous guest had left behind anything resembling footwear. No such luck, though the cottage itself more than made up for my footwear shame. It sits right on the edge of Ringsjoen, which is not one lake but a connected series of them, and the light that evening was doing that extraordinary Scandinavian thing where everything looks slightly golden and unreal. The house is traditional Skane style, red wooden exterior, white trim, the sort of place that makes you feel you should be wearing proper knitwear and discussing philosophy.

We had planned, being enthusiastic and slightly delusional, to spend our first day doing a proper coastal hike. The Skaneleden trail runs sections near the coast, and we had our hearts set on walking from somewhere near Kaseberga toward the Ale Stones, that strange ship-shaped stone monument that sits on the cliffs. The weather, however, had other ideas. We woke to what the Swedes would probably call brackt but I would call properly warm, almost muggy, with a sky that looked like it was considering rain but had not quite committed. By the time we had eaten our breakfast of filmjolk and knackebrod, which I am still not convinced I am pronouncing correctly, the temperature had climbed into the mid-twenties and the air felt thick enough to swim through.

We set off anyway, because we are British and stubborn, and made it perhaps two miles along a coastal path before admitting defeat. The heat was not the dry, manageable sort but that particular coastal humidity that comes off the Baltic when the wind is wrong, and I was already developing the sort of friction blisters that cheap petrol station trainers specialise in. We turned back, slightly humbled, slightly laughing at ourselves, and spent the afternoon doing something I would never have planned but now cannot imagine skipping.

We walked instead around the immediate lake area, barefoot where the grass was soft enough, following narrow paths through birch woodland that offered actual shade. The water at Ringsjoen was warm enough for a proper swim, not the gasping, brave-face affair I had expected from a Swedish lake, and we spent hours doing very little except floating and watching dragonflies. It was not the ambitious coastal adventure we had mapped out, but it was exactly what that particular day demanded.

That evening, as the heat finally broke into a soft, warm rain that drove us onto the covered porch with cups of coffee, I found myself reflecting on how often I let plans become prisons. The boots on the kitchen table, the abandoned coastal hike, the improvised lake wandering, it had all become something better than the original idea. Skane in warm weather does not need you to perform some grand walking achievement. It rewards the person who pays attention to what the day is actually offering, whether that is a cliff-top breeze or the stillness of lake water against your shoulders.

We did make it to the coast later in the week, properly booted and on a cooler morning, and the Ale Stones were genuinely extraordinary. But when I think back to that holiday now, it is the unplanned afternoon at Ringsjoen that stays with me, the way the light fell through the birch leaves, the feeling of having accidentally found exactly where I needed to be.