I should have known the holiday was going to be characterful when I got my first Danish lesson from a petrol station attendant somewhere past Aarhus. I'd pulled in to ask for directions to Ebeltoft Strand, managing to pronounce it so badly that the poor chap looked at me like I'd asked for the moon on a stick. "Eb-EL-toft," he repeated, slowly, as if addressing a well-meaning toddler. "Not Ee-BEL-toft. You are not making a bell sound." Fair enough. I thanked him, bought some frankly alarming liquorice, and carried on towards Djursland with my tail between my legs.

The drive itself was gorgeous in that understated Scandinavian way. Rolling fields, red-roofed farmhouses, the odd sheep giving me a judgmental stare. But nothing prepared me for the cast of characters waiting at Ebeltoft Strand.

First up was Bent, the property manager, who met me at the key collection with a handshake that could crack walnuts and a running commentary on the local wildlife. "We have deer," he announced, as if delivering news of a royal visit. "They will watch you. Do not take it personally." He then spent twenty minutes explaining the recycling system with the intensity of a man describing nuclear codes, before admitting with a conspiratorial wink that he himself sometimes got the green and brown bins mixed up. "But you did not hear this from me," he said, tapping his nose.

The neighbouring cabin was occupied by Lise and her husband Erik, a retired couple from Odense who had apparently appointed themselves unofficial welcome committee. Within an hour of my arrival, Lise appeared with a Tupperware of something she called "traditional beach cake," though Erik later whispered that she'd bought it from the Netto in town. "Do not tell her I told you," he said, with the practiced weariness of a man who had kept many such secrets over forty years of marriage. We stood on my little wooden deck, watching the Kattegat sparkle, and Lise interrogated me about British tea habits with the thoroughness of a customs official.

"Builder's tea," I said, when she pressed for specifics. She looked horrified. Erik laughed so hard he nearly dropped his beer.

Down at the little harbour, I met Jens, who ran a modest fishing boat and sold his catch from a shed that smelled powerfully of the sea and strong tobacco. He spoke almost no English but communicated through elaborate gestures and the occasional shouted Danish word that Bent later translated for me. Apparently Jens had been telling me that my jacket made me look like a confused mushroom. He said it with such warmth that I couldn't possibly take offence. He gave me a free handful of prawns, which I accepted like a knighthood.

The absolute highlight, though, was Saturday morning at the local bakery. I'd gone in search of a pastry and found myself in a queue behind a man named Henning, who seemed to know absolutely everyone and insisted on introducing me to each person as "the Englishman who cannot say Ebeltoft properly." The baker, a formidable woman called Mette, joined in by refusing to serve me until I attempted the pronunciation again. The whole shop watched. I mangled it. She gave me my cinnamon roll anyway, saying something in Danish that made everyone laugh. Henning translated: "She says you need feeding more than you need speaking lessons."

That evening, I sat on the beach with my pastry-scented shame and watched the sun lower itself towards the horizon. A woman walking her dog stopped to chat, or rather to let her ancient Labrador sniff my shoes while she told me about her divorce, her daughter's wedding, and her opinion that British people work too hard. "You are here now," she said, as if this solved everything. "That is the important thing."

She was right, of course. I'd arrived with my terrible pronunciation and my confused-mushroom jacket, and somehow this little stretch of Djursland had folded me into its rhythm without fuss or ceremony. The mishaps weren't mishaps at all, really, just the price of admission to something genuine.

As I write this, Bent has just knocked to ask if I've seen the deer. I haven't, but I'm looking. And I'm practising my vowels, very quietly, where nobody can hear.