I should have known the satnav was up to no good when it tried to send us through what looked like someone's private garden. There we were, three hours out of Jonkoping, rattling down yet another gravel track in our hire car, convinced that Maleras must be just round the next bend. It was not just round the next bend. It was not round the next ten bends. My partner, ever the optimist, kept saying "look, more pine trees, we're definitely in Smaland now." I pointed out that we had been in Smaland since the airport, and that pine trees were not exactly a rare commodity.

The proper mishap came when I confidently directed us down what I swore was the correct turning, only to find ourselves at a dead end by a lake so still it looked like a mirror someone had forgotten to hang up. A chap emerged from a red wooden house, presumably wondering why a Renault Clio was performing a twelve-point turn in his driveway. I wound down the window and attempted my finest "hej" which came out more like a cough. He laughed, pointed back the way we'd come, and said something that definitely included "vanster" which I know means left. I went right. Well, I went right after going wrong again and having to reverse past a very judgmental-looking horse.

By the time we actually found Maleras, tucked among birch trees with the late afternoon sun catching its dark wooden cladding, I was in that peculiar state of travel delirium where everything seems either hilarious or deeply profound. The property sat there like it had been waiting patiently for us to stop being idiots. A proper Smaland stuga, all angles and terraces and enormous windows that seemed to drink in the forest. I stood on the gravel drive with my rucksack half-unzipped, bits of travel snack falling out, and felt that lovely shift from "where on earth are we" to "oh, here we are."

The key was in a lockbox, which I fumbled with for an embarrassing length of time while my partner explored the outside. She found the wood-fired sauna first, naturally, and was already planning evening sessions before I'd even got the front door open. When I finally managed it, the smell hit me immediately - that clean, slightly sweet scent of pine and old timber that makes you want to breathe deeper than usual. The living area opened up with those huge windows framing nothing but green, layers of it, birch and spruce and undergrowth so thick you couldn't see twenty metres into it. I kept waiting for an elk to wander past like a Swedish Bambi, but none obliged.

The kitchen was compact but properly equipped, not one of those holiday lets where you get a blunt knife and a tin opener from 1973. We made tea immediately, because we are British and that is what we do in moments of emotional significance, minor victories, and indeed most other moments. I took mine out onto the terrace, which wrapped round two sides of the house, and stood there feeling smug about the whole getting-lost business. There's something about accidental discovery that beats planned perfection every time. If we'd arrived by the direct route, I'd remember the journey as merely efficient. Instead I had a lake, a judgmental horse, and a man whose name I never learned but who probably still tells people about the lost English people.

That evening we walked without purpose, which is the only way to properly arrive somewhere new. The track behind the house led who-knows-where, so naturally we followed it. Found a clearing where someone had long ago abandoned an old hay rake, now rusted into something sculptural. Found bilberry bushes, not quite ripe but promising. Found a spot where the forest opened up and you could see across a valley to more forest, more lakes, more of that endless Smaland mosaic of woodland and water. We stood there until the midges found us, then retreated to plan our proper getting-lost for tomorrow.

The sauna got fired up after all, because my partner's priorities are correct. I sat in that wooden box sweating out the travel stress, listening to nothing much, thinking about how I'd nearly missed all of this through sheer navigational stubbornness. Sometimes the wrong turn is the whole point. I made a mental note to get lost more often, knowing perfectly well that I would continue to insist I knew exactly where I was going right up until the evidence became overwhelming. Some patterns you don't break, you just learn to laugh at.

Morning brought proper coffee and the realisation that the terrace caught sun from absurdly early. I sat there in a blanket with my mug, watching a squirrel perform acrobatics in the nearest birch, already plotting which direction to wander today. The satnav stayed firmly in the car. We had maps, we had feet, we had the excellent Swedish tradition of allemansratten letting us roam pretty much anywhere. What more could anyone need, apart from perhaps a slightly better sense of direction and the ability to pronounce Swedish place names without sounding like you're having a medical episode.

By day three I had stopped checking my phone for signal, stopped wondering what was happening elsewhere, stopped trying to plan anything beyond "shall we turn left or right at that big rock." The answer was usually "both, eventually," and the results were always better than anything I could have researched. A swim in a lake we never learned the name of, so cold it stole my breath for three full seconds before my body adjusted to the shock. A village bakery, found by following the smell of cardamom, where an elderly woman sold us kanelbullar still warm and explained in patient English that we were pronouncing "Maleras" slightly wrong, which explained the initial satnav confusion.

I think that might be the real gift of places like this. Not the sauna, though the sauna is excellent. Not the views, though the views are relentless in their beauty. It's the permission to be slightly incompetent, to wander without objective, to discover that your mistakes have landed you somewhere you couldn't have found on purpose. I arrived at Maleras via wrong turns and stubbornness, and I left with the strange conviction that I ought to get lost more often, in more places, with more willingness to see where the wrong path actually leads.

The horse, I suspect, would disagree with my entire philosophy. But then, the horse didn't get to sit in that sauna, did it?