I have never been particularly gifted at following sat nav instructions, which is how I found myself reversing down a farm track near Fjellerup with a wheelbarrow blocking my path and a very unimpressed-looking horse staring at me through the windscreen. The gravel road to our holiday home was, it turned out, the next left. Not this left. The left after the left. Classic me.

We had driven up from Aarhus that morning, full of that particular optimism that comes from Danish pastries and a full tank of petrol. Djursland stretched out before us, all rolling fields and sudden glimpses of the Kattegat glittering between gaps in the hedgerows. My partner had done the sensible thing and booked us a proper Scandinavian escape - one of those timber-clad places with a hot tub and enough decking to host a modest wedding reception. I had done the less sensible thing of assuming my phone would cope with rural Danish postcodes.

The mishap did give us something though. Lost on that wrong track, we spotted a handwritten sign pointing toward what looked like nothing at all. "Gammel Strandvej" it read, with an arrow that suggested either a beach path or someone's private garden. We made a mental note, reversed past the horse with what dignity remained, and eventually found the actual driveway to our Fjellerup base.

The house was better than the photographs, which never happens. Proper hygge territory - wood-burning stove, enormous windows, that particular smell of pine and sea air that makes you immediately want to take your shoes off and stay for a fortnight. But I am getting ahead of myself, because what struck me first was the silence. Not empty silence, but the busy quiet of a place where nature has not yet learned to compete with traffic. Geese somewhere distant. The creak of the timber in the afternoon warmth. My own stomach, because we had skipped lunch in our eagerness to arrive.

We unpacked with the haste of people who have been in a car too long, then did that thing where you immediately need to explore despite having nowhere particular to go. This is how the real holiday began. The handwritten sign from earlier tugged at my curiosity like a loose thread. We walked, initially toward the beach we knew existed somewhere eastward, then simply followed whatever path looked least like a proper destination.

The coastal paths around Fjellerup are not grandly signposted affairs. They are worn tracks through marram grass, sudden wooden steps down to coves that feel borrowed rather than shared. We found one such spot by following a trail that seemed to dead-end at a private summerhouse, only to continue around its boundary in a way that felt almost accidental. The beach was tiny, pebbly, and entirely ours. My partner swam despite the September chill. I made excuses about watching belongings and took photographs that failed to capture the particular grey-green of the water.

Getting properly lost came the next morning. I had insisted on a cycle, having found two rusty bicycles in the property's shed. The local map suggested a network of lanes connecting Fjellerup to neighbouring villages. What it did not suggest was that several of these lanes simply became field tracks without warning, or that my sense of direction would prove as reliable as my sat nav skills.

We ended up somewhere near Glesborg, though I could not have told you that at the time. A village church appeared around a bend with the surprise of a stage magician's reveal, its churchyard containing gravestones worn to illegibility and a bench positioned with evident wisdom to catch the afternoon light. We sat there eating packed lunches of rugbrod and rather too much pickled herring, watching a local man tend what I eventually understood was a community apple orchard. He did not speak to us, but he did leave a wheelbarrow of windfalls near the gate with a sign that simply said "tag" - take. We took. The apples were imperfect, bruised, and absolutely the best I have eaten.

The afternoon became a meander without objective. A dirt track led to a fishing lake where an elderly Dane showed us his catch with the pride of a parent displaying school photographs. Another wrong turn deposited us at a farm shop selling honey in jars with handwritten labels, the owner emerging from a workshop smelling of wood smoke and beeswax. We bought two jars and a candle we did not need. Everywhere we went, people seemed mildly surprised to see us, then immediately generous with directions that assumed knowledge of local landmarks we did not possess.

By the time we found our way back to Fjellerup, the light was fading and my legs were protesting in languages I did not know I spoke. The hot tub awaited, and we sank into it with the particular satisfaction of people who have earned their comfort through mild incompetence.

That evening, eating those windfall apples on the decking with the Kattegat invisible but audible in the darkness, I found myself reflecting on how rarely I allow myself this particular pleasure. Not the hot tub, though that was lovely. The pleasure of not knowing where I am going. Of following a track to its uncertain end. Of trusting that wrong turns in a place like Djursland rarely lead anywhere genuinely wrong, only somewhere not yet discovered.

I am not naturally good at this. My ordinary life runs on calendars and notifications and the anxious checking of maps before leaving the house. Something about Fjellerup's particular back-of-beyond quality, its lanes that peter out and paths that appear unannounced, forced a different rhythm. I cannot say I have fundamentally changed. But I can say that for those few days, I stopped checking my phone for location and started noticing where I actually was.

The horse, we passed again on our final morning. I like to think it looked slightly less judgmental. Or perhaps I had simply stopped caring about judgment, temporary and location-specific as that feeling always is.