I have never been so relieved to see a lighthouse in all my life. There it was, perched on Bornholm's rocky coast like a very tall, very welcome friend, and I knew I had finally found Svaneke after three hours of convincing myself that every winding lane looked exactly the same.

The mishap, because there always is one with me, happened at Rønne harbour. I had proudly collected my hire car, a boxy little thing the colour of overcooked peas, and promptly drove it straight into a parking bollard at approximately four miles per hour. The bollard was fine. My dignity was not. A fisherman watched the whole thing from the quayside, leaning on a crate with the relaxed posture of a man who had seen far worse. He gave me a thumbs up. I gave him a panicked wave and pretended I had meant to stop there all along.

The drive to Svaneke should have been straightforward. It is not a large island, Bornholm. You can cycle across it in a morning if you are keen and have thighs of iron. I am neither. What I am is easily distracted by roadside smokehouses, of which there are approximately one every hundred metres. I stopped at three. By the third, a woman called Inga had adopted me. She stood in her wooden hut, hair the colour of the smoked herring she was selling, and decided I needed educating.

"You are going to Svaneke," she said. It was not a question. She had spotted the address on my phone, which I had foolishly left on the passenger seat.

"I am," I confirmed, like a man admitting to a mild crime.

"Good ceramics there," she said. "Bodil, she makes the bowls. You tell her Inga sent you for the blue one. She will pretend not to know me. She always does."

I promised I would. I did not know who Bodil was. I still do not, entirely.

The cottage itself, when I finally found it, was tucked down a lane so narrow I had to fold in the wing mirrors and breathe in. A man was waiting outside, which gave me a fright until I realised he was not waiting for me specifically. This was Jens, the neighbour, who had taken it upon himself to water the geraniums in the absence of whoever normally did. He was seventyish, wearing sandals with socks in that particular Scandinavian way that somehow looks intentional rather than tragic.

"You are the English," he announced.

"I am."

"We had an English here before. He tried to barbecue in November. Very sad."

I assured him I had no barbecue ambitions whatsoever. He looked disappointed.

The cottage was yellow, properly yellow, the colour of custard or optimism. Jens showed me how to work the wood burner with the solemnity of a man passing down sacred knowledge. There were seventeen steps involved. I remembered four. He also explained that the tap water was excellent, the best in Denmark, possibly the world, and that I should not insult him by buying bottled. I have never felt so strongly about tap water in my life.

That evening I walked down to Svaneke harbour, still slightly vibrating from the drive and the bollard and Inga's herring. The place was absurdly pretty in that way that makes you suspicious. Fishing boats bobbed about. A man played an accordion badly but enthusiastically outside the smokehouse. I bought a beer from a kiosk and sat on the harbour wall, watching a group of teenagers attempt to jump into the water and immediately regret the temperature.

A woman sat down next to me without introduction. She was perhaps sixty, wearing a magnificent purple coat that made her look like a quality aubergine.

"You are staying in the yellow one," she said. Also not a question. "Jens told everyone."

"He did?"

"He tells everyone everything. It is his hobby. Last week he told the postman about a rash."

I did not know what to say to this. I said nothing. It was the right choice.

"I am Lene," she continued. "I make ice cream. You will come tomorrow. The salted caramel, it will change your philosophy."

I told her my philosophy was fairly flexible. She liked this. She laughed like a seal bark, abrupt and joyful, and then she was gone, purple coat sweeping down the harbour steps.

I sat there a while longer, watching the light do that particular Baltic thing where it lingers and lingers as if reluctant to leave. Somewhere behind me, the accordion man started up again. I thought about Inga and her herring, about Jens and his geraniums and his oversharing, about Lene and her philosophy-altering caramel. I thought about how I had come to this small yellow cottage with my bollard-bumped car and my talent for getting lost, and how already it felt less like a holiday let and more like being dropped into someone else's ongoing conversation.

I finished my beer. The teenagers had given up on the water and were huddled in towels, shivering and triumphant. The accordion wheezed to a halt. I walked back up the lane in the half-light, already rehearsing how I would ask Jens for the wood burner instructions again, already planning my visit to Lene's ice cream shop, already wondering whether Bodil would indeed pretend not to know Inga.

That is the thing about Svaneke, I think. You arrive thinking you are just staying somewhere. You leave realising you have been collected.