The thing about Swedish satnavs is they have absolutely no patience for British dithering. Ours decided to announce "turn left" precisely as I was gaping at a moose warning sign, which meant I missed the lane entirely and found myself bumping down what I can only describe as a tractor's memory of a road. My wife gave me that look. The children found it hilarious. I spent ten minutes executing a seventeen-point turn while a very patient horse observed my shame from a neighbouring field.

We were bound for Gunnarp, a little spot in Vastra Gotaland where we had booked a proper Swedish cottage through Novasol. The kind with a red wooden exterior and white trim that makes you feel you have wandered into an illustrated children's book. I had promised everyone an authentic experience. So far they had experienced my terrible navigation and an increasingly desperate hunt for a petrol station that sold anything resembling a sandwich.

When we finally found the proper turning, the lane narrowed to something barely wider than the car. Birch trees leaned in conspiratorially, their leaves filtering the afternoon light into shifting patterns on the bonnet. The children fell silent, which in my experience means either wonder or travel sickness. Fortunately it was the former. We emerged into a clearing and there sat our cottage, looking impossibly picturesque against a backdrop of mixed forest and the glint of what I later learned was Lake Anten, though from that angle it appeared as merely a suggestion of water through the trees.

I had rather grandly announced I would be the one to unlock the door, producer of the key with a flourish. The lock, however, had other ideas. It was one of those sturdy Swedish mechanisms that requires a specific temperament, a particular angle, and apparently a blood sacrifice I was unprepared to offer. After several minutes of increasingly creative key manipulation, during which my wife helpfully suggested I might try "the other way round," I surrendered my dignity and read the instructions. Turn key, push door firmly. Not pull. Push. The door swung open and I stepped inside with what I hoped looked like intentional competence.

The first impression was of wood everywhere, and I mean that in the best possible way. Pine walls that smelled faintly of resin and something else, something clean and aired. The living area opened directly into a kitchen that was compact without being cramped, with windows facing the trees that made washing up feel like a nature documentary. My daughter immediately claimed the loft bedroom, which required climbing a ladder steep enough to qualify as exercise. My son investigated the terrace doors, discovering they opened onto a wooden deck where a barbecue sat waiting with what I can only describe as optimistic readiness.

I found myself standing in the middle of the main room, holding the car keys and a bag of groceries we had panic-bought in Alingsas, suddenly aware of how quiet it was. Not the oppressive quiet of an empty house, but the living quiet of a place surrounded by forest and water. A bird called from somewhere, answered by another. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked once and thought better of it. My wife appeared at my elbow with two cups of tea she had somehow produced from the chaos of our arrival, and we stood there on the wooden floor, British to our bones, drinking tea in a Swedish cottage and feeling rather pleased with ourselves despite everything.

The mishaps of the journey already felt like part of the story rather than the disaster they had seemed at the time. That is the curious thing about arriving somewhere that immediately feels right. The wrong turns and the stubborn lock and the horse's judgmental stare all became, in that first hour, the proper beginning of something. We had not simply travelled to a place. We had earned our way there, however clumsily, and the cottage seemed to acknowledge this with its comfortable chairs and its view of trees that would, we discovered, turn golden as the week progressed.

I unpacked the terrible sandwiches. We ate them on the terrace as the light softened into evening. They tasted, in that setting, almost acceptable. Almost.