I have never been so relieved to see a set of pine trees in all my life. After a flight to Copenhagen, a train that turned out to be a bus replacement service, and a ferry from Ystad that I very nearly missed because I was queuing for a hot dog, I finally rolled onto Bornholm feeling like a crumpled packet of crisps. The taxi driver, a lovely man called Henrik who spoke better English than I do, deposited me at the end of a gravel track with nothing but a handwritten sign and the smell of the Baltic Sea for company.

This was Sømarken, my home for the week. A traditional Danish summerhouse, or sommerhus, tucked among the pines near the village of Aakirkeby. I had booked it in a rush during a particularly grim Tuesday afternoon at work, seduced by photos of a red wooden cabin and promises of proper peace and quiet. Standing there with my wheelie case sinking into the gravel, I felt that peculiar mix of holiday excitement and mild panic that comes from realising you are entirely at the mercy of your own questionable life choices.

The mishap, when it came, was spectacularly stupid. I had been sent a key code and instructions to find a small metal box attached to the cabin wall. Simple enough, except I had written the code on my phone, which had died somewhere between Ystad and Ronne. I stood there jabbing random numbers like a burglar having a breakdown, increasingly aware that the only other living creature for miles was a rabbit watching me with what I can only describe as professional disappointment. Twenty minutes of this. Twenty minutes of Danish summerhouse security defeating a grown man from Birmingham.

In desperation I tried my birthday. The box sprang open. I had, in my jet-lagged state, apparently used my own birth date as the code when booking. The rabbit hopped away, presumably to file a report.

The first impression of the cabin itself was that overwhelming smell of pine and old wood that hits you like a friendly slap. Everything creaked. The floorboards, the door hinges, even the air seemed to creak after the silence of the forest. I dumped my case and immediately walked into a low beam, which I mention only because it set the tone for my entire relationship with this place. Danish people, I have since learned, are built closer to the ground. I am not.

I made tea using a kettle that took approximately one geological age to boil, and sat on the little wooden deck with my throbbing forehead. The trees moved in that particular Baltic way, not rustling so much as whispering, and somewhere beyond them I could hear the sea. Proper silence, the kind that makes you aware of your own breathing. I had not heard silence like this since before I owned a smartphone. It was deeply unsettling, then completely wonderful, then slightly worrying again when I realised I had no idea what to do with my hands.

The cabin was simple in that deliberate Scandinavian way. White walls, wooden floors, a kitchen that looked like it had been designed by someone who genuinely cooks rather than someone who watches cooking programmes while eating cereal. There was a wood-burning stove that I immediately decided I was too incompetent to operate, and windows that framed the pines like deliberate paintings. Someone had left a jar of local honey on the counter with a note in Danish that I later translated to mean basically "enjoy, you tragic creature."

That first evening I walked to the nearby beach at Sømarken Strand, which sounds grander than it is. A small curve of sand and pebbles, a few weathered wooden posts, the sea doing that grey-green thing it does in this part of the world. I stood there with my shoes in my hand, still wearing my airport socks with a hole in the toe, and felt the particular foolishness of the solo traveller who has arrived somewhere beautiful and must now reckon with the fact that they have brought themselves along.

The sun went down slowly, as it does in June, and I walked back through the pines with sand in my shoes and a growing sense that I had absolutely no plan for the week ahead, which was precisely the point. The cabin waited for me, creaking gently, indifferent to my nonsense. I had arrived. I had forgotten my phone charger. I had walked into a beam. I was, against all reasonable expectation, completely happy.