I have never been so grateful for a sat nav with a sense of humour, which is just as well because mine clearly thought the route to our Sorunda cottage near Nynashamn was some sort of practical joke. We had flown into Stockholm full of Scandinavian dreams, collected our hire car at Arlanda, and set off with that particular brand of British optimism that assumes everything will be straightforward because, well, we had paid for it to be. Three wrong turns, one accidental tour of an industrial estate that definitely was not on any brochure, and a deeply humiliating moment where I reversed into a hedge in front of a man walking his dog later, we finally found the turning. The dog walker, a chap called Lars with a beard you could lose a sandwich in, did not laugh. He did, however, offer to guide us the final stretch, walking alongside the car with his golden retriever trotting behind like this was the most normal Tuesday afternoon imaginable.

The cottage itself was one of those red wooden numbers that make you feel instantly fraudulent, as if someone is going to appear and ask for your properly outdoorsy credentials. Before we could even unload the cases, our neighbour emerged from next door. Birgitta, seventy-ish, wearing wellies that had seen actual agricultural use, informed us that she had watched our approach with some interest and would we like coffee. It was not really a question. We sat on her porch while her ancient cat attempted to murder a bumblebee, and she told us about the previous occupants, a Danish couple who had tried to forage mushrooms and spent three days in hospital. "Not from here," she said, with the resigned tone of someone stating an obvious natural law.

The local shop, which we visited in a desperate hunt for milk that had not spent four hours in a warm car, introduced us to Anders behind the counter. Anders had opinions about our sat nav, our driving, and the hedge I had damaged, which apparently belonged to his cousin. He also had excellent herring and a willingness to explain the fourteen different types to us as a small queue formed behind, nobody seeming particularly bothered about the delay. An elderly woman in that queue, Ingrid, joined in to suggest we try the archipelago boat from Nynashamn harbour rather than driving anywhere else, given our demonstrated competence. She said this with a smile that took any sting from it, then pressed a packet of cinnamon biscuits on us because we looked like we needed feeding.

That evening, attempting to work the cottage's wood-burning stove with the confidence of people who had watched approximately one YouTube video, we produced more smoke than heat. A knock at the door revealed not the fire brigade, thankfully, but a teenager from the house across the lane, Erik, who had been sent by his mother to check we were not actually burning the place down. He fixed the stove in roughly ninety seconds, refused payment with the embarrassment only a sixteen-year-old can muster, and admitted his mother had bet him we were English before we opened our mouths. "She says you always apologise for the weather," he said, which felt unfairly accurate.

By the time we finally sat down with the stove crackling properly and those cinnamon biscuits, I found myself reflecting on how thoroughly we had failed at the self-sufficient cottage holiday fantasy, and how little it mattered. We had arrived as competent adults and within hours been rescued by a dog walker, adopted by a neighbour, educated by a shopkeeper, insulted- affectionately- by a queueing pensioner, and saved from smoke inhalation by a teenager whose mother had us pegged from fifty metres. There is something particular about Swedish countryside hospitality, I think, that does not fuss or perform but simply shows up with practical solutions and slightly dry observations about your inadequacies.

I had packed books I never opened and plans I never followed. Instead I learned which mushrooms would hospitalise you, heard Anders' cousin was not actually angry about the hedge, and accepted that Birgitta would be checking our woodpile situation daily. Some holidays are about what you do. This one, already, felt like it was going to be about who you met while doing it badly, and I was unexpectedly content with that arrangement.