I'd never driven onto a Danish island before, so naturally I treated it like a military operation. Sat-nav charged, snacks packed, children bribed with Haribo. What I had not accounted for was the ferry from Ballebro to Hardeshoj taking actual cash only, and my wallet being buried somewhere beneath a collapsed fort of travel pillows and half-eaten cereal bars. The queue behind us grew. My partner developed a very particular expression. I performed an undignified scramble through the footwell, emerging triumphant with twenty kroner in sticky coins, and we rolled onto the boat with the relieved laughter of people who had narrowly avoided becoming a local anecdote.

Als announced itself gently. Green fields, tidy villages, that particular Scandinavian light that makes everything look slightly more wholesome than it deserves. We followed narrow lanes toward Købingsmark Strand, the sat-nav growing increasingly insistent as the roads narrowed to something approaching a generous footpath. The cottage appeared through a gap in the trees, and I will confess to a small internal swoon. Red wood, white trim, the whole hygge fantasy standing there with a deck that practically demanded bare feet and a cup of something warm.

The key was in the lockbox, which opened easily, which immediately made me suspicious. Nothing on holiday opens easily. I spent several moments checking we had not accidentally burgled someone else's Danish dream before accepting our good fortune.

Inside smelled of pine and slightly of the sea. The open-plan living area had that wonderful Scandinavian trick of feeling minimal yet completely practical. Huge windows framed the garden, and beyond it, glimpses of water. I stood there with my bag still on my shoulder, suddenly aware of how tightly I had been holding myself since leaving home. My daughter had already located the loft bedroom and was announcing her kingdom from above. My son had discovered the television and was attempting to operate it with the determination of someone defusing a bomb.

I unpacked with the methodical slowness of a person pretending to be on holiday rather than actually being on one. It took the sight of my partner actually putting their feet up on the sofa, shoes actually off, to remind me that this was the point. The doing of very little. The being together in a space that was not our own cluttered territory.

The kitchen was better equipped than ours at home, which produced its own strange guilt. We had brought pasta and jars of sauce like people expecting hardship. Instead we found proper knives, a coffee machine that looked like it belonged in a Copenhagen cafe, and a view over the deck that made washing up seem almost appealing.

By late afternoon we had established our pattern without discussion. Children in and out of the garden, the door banging with that particular frequency that would irritate me at home but felt here like the soundtrack of freedom. My partner walked to the water's edge and returned with wet shoes and a report of excellent skipping stones. I made terrible coffee and drank it on the deck, watching the light shift across the little inlet.

The mishap with the ferry already felt like the proper beginning of things. A small humiliation that had become funny, that had marked the boundary between the journey and the arrival. I thought about how much of my regular life I spend avoiding exactly that kind of moment, and how little it had actually mattered.

We ate pasta with jarred sauce on the deck, because some habits are worth keeping, and watched the sky turn that soft northern grey-pink that lasts for hours. The children were filthy and happy. I was slightly sunburnt in that way that happens when you forget that Danish sunshine still counts. Tomorrow we would explore properly, find the nearest beach, perhaps attempt the barbecue that sat optimistically on the patio.

But that first evening was simply for settling into the particular rhythm of elsewhere. The creak of unfamiliar floorboards. The slightly different quality of silence. The gentle chaos of family life transplanted into a red wooden cottage by a quiet Danish shore.