I have never been brilliant with ferries, and the crossing from Odden to Aarhus did nothing to improve my record. I had spent the entire sailing convincing myself I was a perfectly capable adult who could navigate a Danish holiday without incident. By the time I drove off the ramp, I was already lost, my phone mount had collapsed into the footwell, and I had somehow set the sat nav to Swedish. The forty-minute drive to Djursland felt like a personal endurance test, me crawling along country lanes behind tractors, desperately trying to read road signs that seemed to feature more vowels than I thought physically possible.

The mishap, when it came, was almost impressively stupid. I had stopped at a supermarket in Ebeltoft to stock up on essentials, which in my case meant bread, cheese, and what I believed to be a sensible quantity of beer for a week. I loaded everything into the boot, congratulated myself on my organisational skills, and drove the final stretch to the holiday home with the boot wide open. Not slightly ajar. Properly open, like a hungry mouth. The beer survived. My dignity did not. I arrived at the property to discover a bag of rolls had escaped somewhere near Grenaa, and my favourite jumper was now decorating a hedgerow two miles back. I chose not to retrieve it. Some losses you simply accept.

The cottage itself sits in proper countryside, the kind that makes you immediately conscious of how much noise you make as a human being. I crunched up the gravel drive far too loudly, still flustered from the boot incident, and stood there for a moment just taking it in. The house is traditional Danish style, red wooden cladding, white trim, that lovely pitched roof that makes everything look slightly storybook. After my chaotic arrival, it felt almost aggressively peaceful. I half expected someone to appear and ask me to keep my turmoil to a lower volume.

Getting inside was my next challenge. The key lockbox and I had a brief but tense relationship involving me reading the code wrong three times and nearly convincing myself I had been scammed. When the door finally opened, the smell hit me first, that particular clean wooden scent of a holiday home that has been properly aired. The living room is open and light, with those enormous windows that seem to pull the garden right into the house. I dumped my remaining bags with far too much enthusiasm and immediately knocked a coaster off the table. The cottage remained unbothered. I was the only one performing stress.

The kitchen, I noticed, was actually properly equipped, which mattered because my cooking ambitions always exceed my abilities. I opened the fridge to check it was working, then closed it, then opened it again as if it might have changed in the thirty seconds between. I do not know why I do this. The bedrooms are upstairs, simple and comfortable, and I made the rookie error of throwing myself onto the nearest bed to test it, then not wanting to move. The garden stretches out behind, lawn and trees and that particular quality of Danish light that makes everything look slightly more significant than it is.

By evening, I had found the terrace, opened a surviving beer, and watched the sky do that slow Scandinavian fade into night. The chaos of the journey already felt like someone else's story. I was still wearing my supermarket receipt in my back pocket, still slightly damp from a ferry coffee incident I have not mentioned, and genuinely content. Some arrivals are elegant. Mine was a shambles. But sitting there, with the quiet pressing in comfortably around me, I thought perhaps that was fitting. The cottage had the sense of a place that has seen all manner of arrivals, smooth and otherwise, and does not judge either. I raised my can to the garden, to my lost jumper, to the rolls now feeding local wildlife, and to a week of hopefully slightly more competent behaviour.