The thing about driving to Smaland is that you convince yourself the Swedish countryside will be straightforward. Wide roads, sensible signage, perhaps a moose politely waiting at a crossing. What you do not expect is your sat-nav developing what I can only describe as an existential crisis somewhere outside Vastervik.

We had been on the road from Kalmar for the better part of an hour when ours decided that our holiday cottage did not, in fact, exist. There we were, two children in the back questioning every life choice that had led them to this hot car, and my wife studiously examining a map she had insisted on bringing "just in case." I maintained a dignified silence about that particular victory.

The mishap, when it came, was gloriously mundane. I spotted what I believed to be our turning, a gravel track winding between pine trees, and committed with the confidence of a man who had not read the sign correctly. The track grew narrower. Then bumpier. Then it deposited us at a farmyard where a very patient Swedish farmer looked up from his tractor with the expression of someone who had seen this exact scene many times before. I wound down the window and attempted what I can only describe as apologetic charades. He pointed back the way we had come, said something that sounded reassuring, and did not laugh until we were out of earshot. I choose to believe this.

The actual track, when we found it, was properly marked and entirely reasonable. Our cottage sat among birch trees with that particular Scandinavian stillness that makes you want to whisper for no reason. Red wooden walls, white trim, a small deck where someone had left a weathered table and chairs. The kind of place that looks like it has absorbed decades of morning coffees and evening glasses of wine.

Inside smelled of pine and something faintly herbal, perhaps from the surrounding forest seeping in through open windows. The kitchen was compact but properly equipped, not one of those holiday lets where you discover the solitary saucepan has seen things. My daughter immediately claimed the loft bedroom, which required a ladder climb she treated with the gravity of a mountaineering expedition. My son tested every sofa cushion with scientific thoroughness.

What struck me most, once the bags were dumped and the kettle found, was how quickly the urgency of arrival dissolved. We had no plans beyond the immediate. The small lake we could glimpse through the trees would do for swimming tomorrow. The berry bushes near the boundary suggested an afternoon of stained fingers and competitive picking. For now, we simply sat on that deck with mugs of tea, watching the light shift through the pines and listening to a woodpecker somewhere establish his territory with persistent optimism.

I found myself reflecting, as one does in such moments, on how much of family holidays I typically spend orchestrating. The bookings, the itineraries, the desperate need to extract value from every hour. Here, with nothing arranged beyond a few days in a wooden house surrounded by forest, that impulse felt almost absurd. The value was in the sitting still, in letting my children discover that entertainment could be a stick, a stone, a beetle undertaking an important journey across the deck.

The farmer, I suspect, had understood something we were only beginning to. Some tracks lead you astray so you appreciate arriving properly.