I have never been a natural at ferry crossings, and my arrival on Als proved this beyond all doubt. There I was, queuing for the Bitten-Clausen ferry from the mainland, smugly early and terribly pleased with myself for remembering to book the cottage at Skovmose Strand. Then I realised, with the slow horror that only comes from absolute certainty, that I had left our entire bag of groceries on the kitchen table back in Sonderburg. Not in the car. Not on the ferry. On a table. In a house we no longer occupied. My partner looked at me with that particular expression married people develop, the one that says "I love you but also how are you this person."

The crossing itself takes barely forty minutes, which I spent mentally cataloguing every meal we would now need to source from whatever shop we could find. The Little Belt glittered innocently, utterly indifferent to my domestic catastrophe. We disembarked onto Als proper and promptly got lost among the narrow lanes, because apparently I had also screenshotted the wrong directions. Technology, I have concluded, simply enables more sophisticated forms of getting things wrong.

Skovmose Strand materialised eventually through a tunnel of beech trees, the holiday cottages arranged in that orderly Danish fashion that makes British housing estates look like they were planned during an argument. Our particular cottage sat near the water's edge, painted in that muted red-brown that Scandinavians understand instinctively and the rest of us spend paint-swatch years trying to replicate. The key code worked first time, which felt almost suspicious after my morning's performance.

Stepping inside, I was immediately struck by that particular stillness of a place recently cleaned and waiting. The wooden floors smelled faintly of pine soap. Large windows framed the inlet with embarrassing perfection, like living inside someone else's accomplished watercolour. I found myself standing quite still, groceries forgotten, watching a heron work its deliberate way along the shoreline. There is something slightly humbling about nature proceeding magnificently while you have just failed to transport a bag of pasta across a short sea crossing.

The cottage proved to be one of those deceptively spacious arrangements, bedrooms tucked under sloping ceilings, a kitchen that actually contained proper knives rather than the blunt instruments British holiday lets consider sufficient. I opened the fridge to confirm its emptiness, confirming our need for provisions, then immediately became distracted by the terrace. Danish holiday architecture understands terraces fundamentally. This one caught the afternoon sun completely, sheltered enough from the breeze that you could sit without developing the determined hunch we British bring to outdoor dining.

My partner had wandered down to inspect the water, returning with the news that the beach was proper sand, not that shingle we brace ourselves for at home, and that several optimistic Danes were already swimming despite temperatures I would personally classify as "aggressive." There is a particular Danish confidence with cold water that I find both admirable and medically questionable.

We found the nearest supermarket eventually, a sensible drive through flat agricultural land dotted with those distinctive Als farmhouses, their thatched roofs like elderly eyebrows. I bought groceries with the desperate enthusiasm of the recently incompetent, filling our basket with things we did not need to compensate for the things I had forgotten. The checkout assistant was politely incurious about my slightly manic demeanour.

That first evening, we cooked badly with unfamiliar hobs and ate on the terrace as the light stretched long across the water. The heron reappeared, or perhaps a different heron, the distinction feeling unimportant. I watched a sailboat struggle against faint wind and felt the particular peace of having arrived despite yourself, of a place remaining welcoming even when your own organisation has collapsed. The groceries sat wrong in unfamiliar cupboards. The bed would prove too soft, then perfect. Everything about the cottage suggested repetition, return, the establishing of small rituals over days not yet lived.

I woke once in the night to absolute darkness and unfamiliar silence, no traffic hum, no distant aeroplane. Just water moving somewhere, and the slight creak of a wooden building settling into its landscape. I remembered the forgotten bag with something like affection, the mistake that had made this arrival more specifically mine, more memorable than competence would have allowed. Some holidays begin smoothly; others begin with ferry queues and empty fridges and the slow realisation that you have, against reasonable expectation, found exactly where you need to be.