I have always believed that the best holidays begin with a small disaster, and our trip to Mommark on the island of Als in Denmark did not disappoint. We had driven from the ferry at Bojden, full of that smug energy you get when you have remembered passports, chargers, and even the travel kettle. Then, somewhere between Augustenborg and Mommark, my partner announced that the accommodation directions were on his phone. The phone that was currently sitting on a picnic table in a service station car park fifty kilometres back. We did a U-turn so sharp I nearly lost the bag of wine gums, and spent the next hour retracing our steps through Danish countryside that suddenly looked identical in every direction. By the time we arrived at the holiday home, we were three hours late, slightly furious with each other, and absolutely desperate for the loo.

The house itself, when we finally found it, was one of those charming wooden places that seem to sag slightly in a welcoming way, as if it has seen many frazzled British arrivals and decided long ago not to judge. There was a deck, a view of fields rolling down toward the water, and a distinct smell of pine and sea air that made the wine gum incident feel rather distant. We dumped our bags, made the worst cup of tea of our lives because Danish kettles operate on some higher frequency we could not understand, and stood on that deck watching the light change over Mommark Harbour. The plan, we had agreed, was walking. Proper walking. The sort of purposeful striding that justifies a large dinner and perhaps a second glass of something.

The next morning I woke to grey skies and a wind that seemed personally annoyed. This did not deter us. We are British. We have waterproofs that have seen worse. We set off toward the coast path that runs east from Mommark, heading for the woods and shoreline beyond. Within twenty minutes it was spitting. Within forty it was doing that particular Scandinavian rain that is not heavy but somehow finds every gap in your supposedly waterproof jacket. We pressed on, because that is what you do, until we reached a clearing where the view across the sound should have been spectacular. It was entirely white. Just fog and determination and the faint outline of a fishing boat that may or may not have been a hallucination.

We turned back. There is a certain humility in retreat, I told myself, though I said nothing aloud because my partner was muttering about his phone again. The following day we tried the inland route, a loop through farmland and small woods toward the village of Fynshav. The sun appeared briefly, like a celebrity doing a walk-on, and we got overexcited. I removed my waterproof. This was, naturally, the signal for a downpour so sudden and theatrical that we sheltered in a bus stop for twenty minutes, sharing a squashed banana and contemplating our life choices. A woman cycled past in full yellow waterproofs, not even glancing at us. The Danes, I decided, are either better prepared or simply more accepting of meteorological betrayal.

By day three we had developed a system. We checked the forecast with the obsessive frequency of gamblers studying form, then ignored it completely. We walked shorter loops, staying closer to the house, learning which paths became muddy streams and which stayed passable. There was a particular route through heathland west of Mommark that became our favourite, not because it was dramatic but because it was reliable. The low bushes, the sandy soil, the way the light came through even on grey afternoons. We walked it in drizzle, in sudden clear moments, in wind that made conversation impossible. We saw hares, once, and stood very still like children playing a game.

On our final morning the weather broke properly. Blue sky, actual warmth, the sea visible all the way to the horizon. We walked the coast path again, the one we had abandoned in fog, and it was transformed. You could see the islands, the boats, the whole geography that had been hidden. It was beautiful, genuinely, and we took the photographs you take to prove something to yourself later. But I think I preferred the grey days, if I am honest. There was something about the struggle of it, the slight ridiculousness of two damp British people trudging through Danish weather with inadequate preparation, that felt more like a proper holiday. More like being properly somewhere else, rather than just seeing it.

We drove back to the ferry with the phone safely in the glove compartment and our boots still muddy in a bag. I have kept a map of our walks, water-stained and slightly torn, as a reminder that the best plans are the ones the weather undoes, and that a good walk in bad conditions is still, somehow, exactly what you needed.