I'd driven all the way from Esbjerg with a boot full of books and absolutely no plan beyond not having a plan. The sat-nav had other ideas, naturally, and deposited me somewhere near a field of very judgmental cows before I finally found the lane down to the cottage in Juelsminde. I pulled up feeling rather pleased with myself, reached for the key safe code on my phone, and promptly dropped the entire thing down the gap between the driver's seat and the centre console. There it sat, tantalisingly visible, wedged above the handbrake mechanism that I hadn't thought about since my driving test. Twenty minutes of undignified contorting later, involving a coat hanger from the boot and some language that would have shocked the cows, I finally retrieved it. Holiday mode: achieved.

The cottage itself was one of those proper Danish summer houses, all pale wood and generous windows, with a garden that had clearly been loved by someone with more patience for weeding than I'll ever possess. I dumped my bags in the hallway, made the mistake of sitting down on the sofa "just for a moment," and woke up forty minutes later with a crick in my neck and absolutely no regrets. This, I decided, was exactly the sort of behaviour this place demanded.

The garden became my kingdom over the following days. There was a wooden terrace where I'd take my morning coffee, watching the light move across the lawn and pretending I understood anything about gardening while actually just admiring how green everything looked. A couple of weathered chairs sat beneath an apple tree that was doing its best to produce fruit despite my complete lack of assistance. I'd position myself there with a novel, fully intending to make respectable progress, then find myself staring at a bumblebee working its way through the clover for what felt like half an hour. The book would sit forgotten on my lap. I never did finish it, and I cannot bring myself to care.

There's something deeply unfashionable about admitting you spent a holiday doing almost nothing. We're supposed to come back with stories, with experiences ticked off, with photographic evidence that we seized every moment. I seized very few moments. I seized a deckchair and held onto it for dear life. The most energetic I became was wandering down to the harbour at Juelsminde, perhaps twenty minutes' stroll, where I'd buy bread and cheese from the little shops and immediately retreat to my vegetative state. The marina there is pleasant enough, all bobbing boats and the smell of salt and diesel, but I'd find myself hurrying back to the garden with the faintly absurd feeling that my chair might have missed me.

I did attempt one afternoon of what I termed "active relaxation," which involved moving from the apple tree to a sun lounger near the back of the garden. The grass there grew slightly longer, more meadow-like, and I'd watch the shadows lengthen across it as the afternoon wore on. A neighbour's cat began visiting, presumably finding my complete inertia reassuring. We'd sit in companionable silence, two creatures who had absolutely nothing to prove to anyone.

The thing about slowing down properly is that it takes longer than you'd think. The first couple of days, I kept catching myself planning: tomorrow I'll walk further, tomorrow I'll see more, tomorrow I'll be a better version of a holidaymaker. By day three, that nonsense had mostly burned off like morning mist. I stopped checking the weather forecast because I was going to sit outside regardless. I stopped feeling guilty about the unread books because the half-read ones had become old friends I was happy to visit briefly then abandon. I ate simple meals at odd hours, cheese and tomatoes and that dense Danish rye bread, often standing at the kitchen window watching nothing in particular.

On my final morning, I packed with the same lack of urgency that had defined the whole trip. The phone stayed firmly in my pocket. I took one last wander around the garden, noticing things I'd somehow missed: the particular way the light caught the cottage's wooden cladding, a patch of herbs gone slightly wild near the terrace, the satisfying creak of the garden gate. I'd arrived in a state of minor chaos, phone down the seat gap, plans unravelling, and was leaving in much the same condition except somehow lighter. The key went back in the safe. The car started on the second try. I drove away slowly, partly because of the lane's potholes, partly because leaving slowly seemed the only appropriate speed.