The ferry from Ystad was meant to be the easy bit. I had sat smugly in the lounge with my coffee, watching Sweden shrink behind us, convinced I had this whole Bornholm trip sorted. Three hours later I was standing in Ronne harbour with one wheel of my suitcase wobbling like a loose tooth and absolutely no idea which bus went north. My phone, naturally, had decided this was the perfect moment to drop to four percent battery. I am not someone who normally considers a taxi a holiday extravagance, but I flagged one down with the desperate energy of a man who had already missed one connection and was not about to miss another.

The driver was lovely, in that particularly Danish way of being helpful without being chatty. He nodded when I said "Bølshavn" and off we went, winding up the coast road with fields of yellow rapeseed flashing past. I had printed the directions, which felt very organised of me, except I had printed them in such tiny font that I needed to hold the paper at arm's length to read anything. The taxi driver glanced at my squinting in the rear-view mirror. I pretended to be admiring the view.

We turned onto a narrower lane, then a gravel track, and suddenly there it was: a proper old fisherman's cottage, weathered wood and that distinctive red roof, sitting right above the rocky shoreline with the Baltic stretching out beyond. I had seen the photos online, obviously, but photos do not capture the particular smell of salt and pine and old stone, or the way the afternoon light catches the water here. I stood there with my wonky suitcase and my crumpled directions feeling, for a moment, genuinely moved. Then I tried to open the key safe and dropped the code sheet into a patch of stinging nettles.

This is the thing about travelling alone, I have realised. There is nobody to witness your small humiliations, which is a blessing, but also nobody to fetch the stick for retrieving paper from nettles, which is not. I found a suitable branch, fished out the code, and finally got inside.

The cottage was exactly what I had hoped for. Low ceilings, slightly uneven floors, a kitchen that clearly dated from a time when people cooked actual meals rather than microwaved ready meals. The previous guests had left a half-empty jar of local honey on the windowsill with a note saying "enjoy," which struck me as impossibly civilised. I put the kettle on, then realised I had no milk because I had been too flustered at the harbour to buy any. Black tea it was, standing at the small window overlooking the water, watching a fishing boat putter past.

I had planned to unpack properly, to make the place feel settled before exploring. Instead I pulled on my walking boots, which I had packed at the top of my bag specifically for this moment, and headed straight down the little path toward the rocks. The evening was warm, that soft Scandinavian light that goes on for hours, and I found a flat stone to sit on and watch the water. A family passed with a dog, nodded hello, carried on. It was all very unhurried, very Danish, very not the frantic energy I had arrived with.

Later, back at the cottage, I discovered the shower took roughly seven minutes to produce hot water and the bedroom window had a catch that required a specific wiggle to close. I did not mind either of these things. In fact, I found myself weirdly pleased by them, as if minor inconveniences were part of the authenticity I had somehow earned through my chaotic arrival. I made pasta with the single pan available, ate it looking out at the darkening water, and felt something in my shoulders finally drop.

I still had milk to buy, and proper groceries, and I needed to figure out the bus timetable for the morning. But sitting there with my mediocre pasta and my black tea, listening to the water against the rocks, I thought: this is exactly why I came. The mishaps, the nettles, the wonky wheel, they were already becoming the funny bits I would tell people later. The cottage, the light, the particular quiet of this little harbour, those were the bits I would keep.