The satnav had other ideas about how to reach our Rortangen, and by "other ideas" I mean it tried to send us through what I can only describe as a field that definitely contained at least one very judgmental sheep. We had been driving up from Gothenburg, which should have been straightforward enough, but somewhere near Kungalv I took a wrong turn and ended up on a gravel track that grew narrower and more philosophical with every metre. My partner, ever the optimist, kept saying things like "oh this looks adventurous" right up until the moment our hire car's front left wheel found a pothole with something of a personal vendetta against Swedish tourism.

We sat there for a moment, two Brits in a compact Volvo, wondering if this was how we would end our days. Eaten by mosquitoes. Judged by livestock.

A man appeared from nowhere, which in Vastra Gotaland seems to be something of a local speciality. He was perhaps sixty, wearing overalls that had seen actual work, and he leaned on our bonnet with the casual familiarity of someone who had rescued many lost foreigners from their own stupidity. "Norwegian?" he asked, which I choose to believe was a compliment to our rugged appearance rather than an assumption about our navigational competence.

We explained about the satnav, the sheep, our general uselessness. He nodded slowly, as if this confirmed everything he suspected about the modern world, then produced a mobile phone that looked like it had been manufactured during the Clinton administration. He made one brief call in Swedish that contained, I am certain, some commentary about English drivers that was not entirely flattering.

Within ten minutes, a tractor appeared. Driven by a woman in her thirties with remarkable blonde braids and the confident bearing of someone who had never once been lost in her entire life. She did not introduce herself. She simply attached a rope to our car, pulled us from the pothole with mechanical indifference, and then stood there waiting for something.

"She wants to know if you have coffee," the older man translated.

We did not have coffee. This was apparently a social catastrophe of significant proportions.

What followed was forty-five minutes at their kitchen table, which I should mention was in a farmhouse approximately two hundred metres from where we had been stuck, though we had somehow missed it entirely during our panicked satnav consultation. The woman, who finally introduced herself as Ingrid after her third cup, produced biscuits that she described as "not special" despite being clearly homemade and objectively superior to anything I have ever produced in my own kitchen. The man, Sven, explained that he had lived in the same valley his entire life and found our need to travel anywhere at all somewhat puzzling.

"You have come to Rortangen for the water?" he asked.

We had, in fact, come for the water. The property we had booked sat right on the edge of a small lake, and the photographs had shown a red wooden cabin with a private jetty and that particular quality of Scandinavian light that makes British people suddenly consider emigration. Sven nodded approvingly, as if we had finally said something sensible.

"But you will need to speak to Bengt about the boat," Ingrid added.

Bengt, it transpired, was the neighbour. Bengt had a boat. Bengt was currently at the supermarket. Bengt would return, or he would not, and this uncertainty seemed to bother nobody except me, the anxious foreigner with a schedule and a hire car now coated in authentic Vastra Gotaland mud.

We eventually reached our actual accommodation, following directions that involved "past the big rock, left at the small rock, when you see the other rock you have gone too far." The cabin was exactly as promised, red and charming and smelling faintly of pine and old summers. I stood on the jetty with a cup of terrible instant coffee, watching the water, thinking about Ingrid's biscuits and Sven's overalls and the unhurried kindness of people who had absolutely no reason to help us but did so anyway, with biscuits and tractors and gentle mockery of our driving.

The satnav went in the glove compartment. Some things, I decided, you simply cannot navigate to. You have to get properly lost first.