I should have known the sat nav was up to no good when it tried to send me through what looked like someone's front garden just outside Gothenburg. Three hours of driving from the airport, my hire car groaning under the weight of a suitcase packed for every weather eventuality, and there I was, bumping down a gravel track that grew narrower with every metre. The voice kept insisting I had arrived. I had most certainly arrived at a muddy turning circle surrounded by pine trees and what I desperately hoped was a very large, very friendly dog.

Turns out it was a sheep. A very woolly, very unimpressed sheep that watched me reverse with what I can only describe as Nordic contempt.

The proper approach to Baggekulla, I later discovered, involves a different track entirely, one that actually reaches the house rather than terminating in an impromptu agricultural encounter. But getting properly lost that first afternoon set the tone for everything that followed. I abandoned the car where the gravel petered out, grabbed my ridiculous overpacked bag, and trudged through birch woodland until the red timber house appeared between the trees like something from a children's illustration.

The key was in the lockbox, exactly as promised, though I spent ten minutes trying the code upside down because I was too proud to read the instructions properly. The door swung open to that particular hush that only countryside houses possess, the kind that makes you immediately want to whisper. Floorboards that have known generations of feet. A kitchen window framing nothing but forest and the distant gleam of what I assumed was Lake Loenern, though at that point I couldn't be certain of anything, geographically speaking.

I dumped my bag and did what any sensible person would do after a sheep-related navigational failure: I made tea and sat on the wooden veranda, watching the light change through the pines. The house had that satisfying solidity of proper Swedish construction, not flashy, not trying to impress, just thoroughly competent at being a place where life happens. The sort of place where you notice the quality of the silence more than the decor.

The mishap with the sat nav became my accidental compass for the entire week. Each morning I'd set out with vague intentions and no particular faith in technology, and each morning I'd find something I wasn't looking for. A tiny beach on Loenern's shore, not marked on any map I could find, where the water was so still it looked like you could step onto it. A clearing in the forest where someone, years ago, had built a rough bench from driftwood, positioned perfectly for no reason except to sit and contemplate birch trunks.

I never did find that sheep again, though I looked. Perhaps it was a guardian spirit of wrong turns, assigned specifically to people who trust satellite navigation too readily. The track I should have taken became familiar eventually, but I kept wandering down the wrong one on purpose, just to see. That's the peculiar gift of places like this: they reward your mistakes with something better than what you planned.

By the final evening, sat nav firmly switched off, I found myself at that unmarked beach again, watching mist settle over the lake. My suitcase still sat half-unpacked, my plans remained largely unexecuted, and I had never once managed to take the correct route back to the house on the first attempt. I couldn't have told you precisely where I was. I knew exactly where I was.