I should have known the satnav was up to no good the moment it tried to send me through what looked suspiciously like someone's vegetable patch. Twelve hours after leaving Manchester, there I was, bleary-eyed and slightly hysterical, arguing with a woman who sounded like she was underwater about whether a gravel track in Nynashamn actually existed. Spoiler: it did. But not before I'd done three laps of a roundabout near Sorunda, convinced I was being punked by Swedish town planning.

The mishap, though. Oh, the mishap. I'd stopped at a petrol station somewhere past Sodertalje - my bladder and my sanity both at breaking point - and in my delirium managed to lock the car with the keys inside. The keys, my phone charger, and more critically, the last of the proper coffee I'd smuggled from home. There I stood, in the kind of drizzle that isn't dramatic enough to be atmospheric, just wet enough to be annoying, doing a small despairing dance outside a Vauxhall Astra while a very polite Swedish man pretended not to notice. RAC membership never felt so precious. Forty minutes and one mortifying phone call later, I was mobile again, vowing never to tell a soul. Yet here we are.

By the time I actually reached the property, something had shifted. Maybe it was the light. The further south I'd driven from Stockholm proper, the more the landscape had opened up - pine forests giving way to proper countryside, the kind that makes you feel like you've stumbled into a slightly too-perfect film set. The house sat back from a quiet road, red wooden cladding glowing improbably in the late afternoon sun that had decided to make an appearance just for my arrival. Very theatrical, Sweden. Very appreciated after my day.

I fumbled with the key box, as one must. There's a particular humiliation to standing on tiptoe, squinting at a four-digit code you've written on a crumpled receipt, while a horse in a neighbouring field judges you openly. Got there eventually. The door opened with that satisfying weight that Scandinavian doors seem to have - substantial, unapologetic, built for winters that would finish me off in a week.

And then the smell. That particular holiday-rental smell of clean linen and slightly too much pine-scented something, which I will never not find comforting. I dumped my bags in a heap of exhaustion and just stood in the kitchen, looking out at the garden. Proper garden, mind - not the postage stamp I manage at home, but actual space, trees, a glimpse of water in the distance that I later learned was the Baltic creeping in. The silence was so complete I could hear my own heartbeat, which was either deeply peaceful or slightly alarming depending on how city-broken you're feeling.

I made terrible instant coffee with the emergency stash in my hand luggage - no way was I attempting the fancy machine in my state - and sat on the wooden deck as the light did that prolonged golden thing it does up here, refusing to properly set. Somewhere, a bird I couldn't identify made a noise like a squeaky toy. I laughed, properly, for the first time since Manchester. The satnav betrayal, the locked car, the damp despair of that petrol station - it all compressed into something almost fond, the necessary chaos before the calm.

Tomorrow I'd explore properly. The harbour at Nynashamn, apparently walkable if my legs recovered. Maybe the local shop in Sorunda, where I'd attempt my three words of Swedish and inevitably be rescued by someone's perfect English. But that evening, I just sat, slightly cold, slightly euphoric, watching the sky turn colours I don't have names for, thinking that sometimes the journey really does make the arrival taste sweeter. Even when the journey involves locking yourself out of your own car like an absolute plum.