I should have known the holiday was going to be interesting when I put "Femmøller" into my sat nav and it suggested a fishmonger in Aarhus. Three wrong turns and one very patient Danish farmer later, I finally found myself bumping down a gravel track somewhere east of Ebeltoft, convinced I'd driven into the middle of a Lars von Trier film.

The thing about East Jutland is that it doesn't shout. It murmurs. Rolling fields, sudden glimpses of the Kattegat, and these curious pockets of forest that appear from nowhere like someone forgot to tell the trees about the agricultural revolution. My Femmøller turned out to be one of those traditional Danish summerhouses, all weathered wood and thoughtful angles, tucked into a little hollow where a stream had apparently been meandering since before anyone thought to give it a name.

I grabbed my bags with that particular optimism of the newly arrived, stepped onto what I assumed was the path, and immediately sank ankle-deep in something that was definitely not mud. Turned out the previous week's rain had turned the "scenic route" to the front door into a minor wetland. There I was, one shoe making unfortunate squelching noises, laughing like an idiot because what else do you do? The local birds seemed unimpressed. A magpie watched me with what I can only describe as Scandinavian disdain.

But here's the curious thing about getting properly lost in a place like this. Once I'd changed my footwear and abandoned any pretence of knowing what I was doing, I started finding things. The property sat near what the owner had vaguely described as "some nice walks," which in Danish understatement meant a network of paths that seemed to have been laid out by someone following a butterfly. I took one that looked promising, missed a turning, missed another, and found myself in a little coppice where someone had long ago abandoned a rowing boat. It sat there among the bracken, perfectly useless, perfectly beautiful, painted a faded red that was peeling into something almost artistic. No explanation. No nearby water large enough to justify it. Just a boat, being a mystery.

I sat on it and ate the terrible sandwich I'd made that morning. It tasted magnificent.

The afternoon became a series of these accidental discoveries. A clearing where wild strawberries grew in such profusion that I stained my fingers picking them. A sudden view through the trees down to a little cove I'd never have found deliberately, the sort of place where a few locals had clearly been swimming for generations, leaving nothing but a rough ladder down the rocks and some very worn smooth stones. I waded in because it seemed rude not to, and the coldness of the water was genuinely shocking. I emerged making noises that I'm glad no human witnessed, but feeling something shift in my chest that I hadn't realised needed shifting.

That's the trick of it, I think. We plan these holidays so carefully now, every restaurant reviewed, every viewpoint geotagged. There's something to be said for following a path until it becomes uncertain, until the certainty of your own poor navigation takes over. I found a bench that afternoon, positioned with what felt like deliberate absurdity facing a hedge rather than the sea. Someone had carved initials into it, decades old, the wood silvered and soft. I sat there longer than I intended, doing nothing useful whatsoever, watching a bumblebee navigate the hedge with more purpose than I'd managed all day.

The evening brought me back to the Femmøller by what I can only describe as luck and the position of the sun. I cooked badly with local ingredients, drank wine on the little wooden deck, and listened to the strange particular silence of a Danish forest at dusk. Somewhere out there was my abandoned boat, my hidden cove, my inexplicable bench. I had no photographs worth showing anyone. I couldn't have found them again if you'd paid me.

I think that was rather the point.