I should have known the holiday proper started the moment our sat-nav gave up somewhere near Randers. We'd been driving up through East Jutland for the better part of three hours, the Danish countryside rolling past in that satisfyingly flat, green way that makes you feel like you're in a particularly well-organised postcard. Then, without warning, the robotic voice announced we had arrived. We had not arrived. We were in a lay-by next to a field of particularly unimpressed-looking cows.

My partner, ever the optimist, suggested we simply follow our noses. I, ever the person who trusts technology over noses, suggested we phone the owner. In the end we compromised: we got spectacularly lost and then phoned the owner. A cheerful chap called Henrik talked us through a series of turns that involved a gravel track, what I can only describe as a suspiciously private-looking farm, and one very narrow bridge that had me folding in the wing mirrors and holding my breath like a child playing hide and seek.

The cottage itself, when we finally found it, sat tucked among trees near Als Odde, that little promontory jutting out into the Kattegat. Helberskov proper was a few minutes down the road, though "proper" might be overstating things in the most charming possible way. The property was one of those classic Danish summerhouse affairs, all wood and sensible Scandinavian practicality, with a deck that looked out towards the water. We dropped our bags, made the obligatory cup of tea using the slightly confusing induction hob, and decided to explore before we lost the light.

This is where I must confess something. I am not, by nature, an explorer. I am a planner. I like a marked trail, a reviewed cafe, a destination with opening hours. But something about that first evening, perhaps the lingering embarrassment of our navigational failure, made me suggest we simply wander. No map, no phone, no particular direction.

We walked down a lane that turned into a path that turned into something that was definitely not a path but rather a gap between two hedgerows. The light was doing that magical Scandinavian summer thing where it simply refuses to fade properly, everything bathed in a soft gold that makes even a muddy track look like it belongs in a gallery. We emerged, slightly scratched and laughing, onto a small cove I'd never have found deliberately. The beach was nothing but pebbles and silence, the water lapping in that rhythmic way that makes conversation unnecessary. We sat on a driftwood log and watched a heron stand motionless at the water's edge, apparently waiting for something we couldn't see.

The next morning, still refusing to plan properly, we set off on bicycles we'd found in the cottage's little shed. Henrik had mentioned, almost as an afterthought, that there were trails through the coastal woods. What he hadn't mentioned was how easy it was to miss the proper trail and end up on something that was probably once a forestry access road and now existed in that liminal space between maintained and forgotten. We bumped along for twenty minutes, mosquitoes finding us with the inevitable accuracy of small flying things, until the track simply stopped at a clearing with a single bench and a view across the Kattegat that made us both go quiet.

I found myself thinking, rather uncomfortably, about how much I'd have missed with my usual approach. The bench had no plaque, no viewpoint marker, no Instagram geotag. Someone had simply decided, at some point, that this spot deserved a place to sit, and had acted on that private impulse. The whole clearing felt like accidentally reading someone else's love letter.

We got lost twice more that week, once finding a tiny harbour where a man was repairing nets in that methodical way that suggested he'd been doing it for decades, and once stumbling into a patch of wild strawberries that stained our fingers and made the rest of the afternoon taste of something sharp and unexpected.

By the end, I noticed I'd stopped reaching for my phone to check where we were. The not-knowing had become, improbably, the point. I still don't know the proper name of that pebble cove, or whether that clearing bench has any official existence. I'm not sure I want to know. Some things, I've decided, are better found by accident, better left unmarked, better simply stumbled upon when the sat-nav has given up and the cows are judging you from a nearby field.