I have always believed that the best holidays happen when your sat-nav gives up and your sense of adventure takes over. My recent trip to a tjoern in Vastra Gotaland proved me absolutely right, though not before a small disaster involving a hire car, a gravel track, and my unshakeable confidence that I knew better than Google Maps.

The journey from Gothenburg started well enough. Smooth roads, lovely scenery, the usual Swedish efficiency. Then my phone decided the tjoern was definitely down a lane that grew narrower with every metre. I pressed on, because of course I did. The gravel became mud. The mud became something I can only describe as a questionable life choice. When the front wheels sank into what I later learned was a drainage ditch disguised by autumn leaves, I sat there for a good minute, questioning every decision that had led me to this moment.

A local farmer appeared from nowhere, which in Sweden means he probably heard my engine crying from three kilometres away. He did not laugh, though his eyes definitely did. With his tractor and what I suspect was years of experience with daft tourists, he pulled me free in minutes. He pointed me back toward the proper road, mentioned something about a shortcut through the woods that only locals used, and sent me on my way with a wave that felt half encouraging, half warning.

I found that shortcut. I also found, entirely by accident, the most peaceful little clearing I have ever stumbled across. A small unnamed lake, barely more than a pond, surrounded by birch trees dropping golden leaves onto water so still it looked like glass. I sat on a rock for twenty minutes, eating the emergency packet of biscuits I keep for precisely these situations, and felt genuinely grateful for my rubbish navigation skills.

The actual tjoern, when I finally reached it, was just as quietly spectacular. These traditional Swedish lake properties have a way of sneaking up on you. One moment you are driving through dense forest, the next you emerge onto a wooden jetty with water stretching ahead and not another building in sight. Mine had a red timber exterior that had faded to the perfect rusty shade, a small rowing boat tied up like an afterthought, and a porch where you could sit with a coffee and pretend you were the last person on earth.

That first evening, still slightly muddy from my earlier adventure, I decided to walk without purpose. No map, no phone, just following a path that looked interesting. This is how I discovered the old stone wall running through the woods, moss-covered and half collapsed, clearly marking a boundary nobody remembers anymore. A bit further on, a clearing where someone had once kept bees, the wooden hives rotting gently back into the earth. I found wild blueberries still clinging to bushes in late September, and ate them until my fingers turned purple.

Getting properly lost became my daily ritual. One morning I followed the sound of running water and found a stream with tiny waterfalls no guidebook mentions. Another afternoon, a wrong turn on what I thought was the way to the nearest village led me to a small chapel, locked but lovely, with a graveyard where every stone bore the same family name going back two hundred years.

The tjoern itself rewarded aimlessness too. I rowed out one misty morning with no destination, ended up exploring a tiny island I had not noticed from shore, and disturbed a heron who looked at me with the exact same expression the farmer had used.

By the end of the week, my car remained sensibly on actual roads. My sense of direction had not improved in the slightest. But I had filled my pockets with pine cones from a forest I cannot name, photographs of a sunset over water I could not find again if I tried, and the certain knowledge that sometimes the wrong path is exactly the right one.