I have always believed that the best holidays begin with a small disaster, and our trip to Kristinehamn in Varmland was no exception. We had been driving north from Karlstad for what felt like hours through a landscape so thick with autumn colour that I kept threatening to pull over every five minutes for photographs. My partner, ever patient, finally agreed to one stop. I leapt from the car with my phone, stepped directly into a ditch concealed by fallen leaves, and emerged with one sodden trainer and a bruise on my pride that would last the entire week. Not my finest moment, but it set the tone perfectly: this would be a holiday of embracing whatever the season threw at us.

The Groenalund property sits just outside Kristinehamn, and arriving in late October meant we pulled up to a scene of almost theatrical Swedish autumn. The birch trees had turned a blazing yellow that seemed to glow against the grey sky, and the red wooden house looked like something from a postcard my grandmother might have kept in a drawer. The air smelled of damp earth and woodsmoke from a neighbour's chimney. I stood there in my one dry trainer, clutching a bag of groceries from the ICA in town, and felt that particular satisfaction of having arrived somewhere that immediately felt removed from ordinary life.

The seasonal influence was impossible to ignore. The daylight was already fading at half past three, which seemed almost comical to two Brits accustomed to drawing the curtains at a sensible hour. We found ourselves operating on what I can only describe as a hibernation schedule: early, hearty breakfasts of filmjolk and crispbread, walks in the precious few hours of proper light, then retreating indoors as the darkness settled. There is something wonderfully permission-giving about autumn in Varmland. You are not expected to be constantly doing. The season demands a slower rhythm, and after the initial restlessness passed, I found myself grateful for it.

The lake, Varnan, lay still and dark beyond the trees. In summer, I imagine, the place would be alive with swimming and boating and the long, bright evenings that Swedes seem to spend entirely outdoors. But our October visit offered something more contemplative. We walked down to the water's edge most mornings, wrapped in layers that increased daily as the temperature dropped, and watched mist rise from the surface like breath. A single rowing boat had been hauled up on the shore, turned upside down for the winter, its purpose finished for the year. I found something moving in that image, though I could not have said why at the time.

Inside the house, the season felt curated rather than endured. The owners had left thick woollen blankets on the sofas and a supply of candles that we burned through at an alarming rate. The kitchen, with its proper stove, became the centre of everything. I attempted a vardagsmat stew one evening, following a recipe I had screenshot in a panic at the airport, and produced something edible but spiritually wrong. My partner was kind about it. We ate by candlelight at four in the afternoon, which felt decadent rather than depressing.

Looking back, I think the autumn setting shaped the holiday more than any particular activity. There were no museums to rush to, no outdoor adventures to exhaust ourselves with. The season stripped everything back to basics: warmth, light, food, companionship. On our final morning, I woke early to find frost on the grass and the first pale suggestion of winter in the air. I stood at the kitchen window with coffee, watching my breath fog the glass, and understood something about myself that I had been avoiding. I am terrible at doing nothing, at simply being present. But Varmland in autumn does not give you much choice. The darkness comes whether you have finished your to-do list or not.

We left with the boot full of damp walking gear and a bag of apples from a tree near the property that we had picked more optimistically than practically. I drove back towards Karlstad more slowly than necessary, watching the yellow leaves fall behind us like a trail we could not help leaving. One wet trainer went straight in the bin when we got home. The other I kept for months, inexplicably, as if it contained some essence of the trip that I was not ready to discard. Perhaps it did.