I have never been brilliant with directions, so the fact I ended up driving down what I am fairly certain was a tractor path instead of the actual road to our holiday cottage should surprise absolutely nobody. My partner sat in the passenger seat doing that thing where they breathe very carefully and say "you're doing fine" in a voice that suggests I am absolutely not doing fine. The kids in the back had already entered that glazed holiday stupor, too many crisps and too much screen time, barely registering that Dad was currently reversing past a very judgmental-looking sheep.

We were headed for Falster, that flat and rather lovely corner of Denmark that feels like someone took all the best bits of rural England and gave them better pastries. Our home for the week was one of those classic Danish holiday cottages, the sort with wooden cladding and a roof that looks like it has been politely declining gravity for decades. I had booked it through Novasol after a few too many glasses of wine one evening, seduced by photos of a terrace and promises of a proper Danish hygge experience. The reality, as I discovered while coaxing our car between two rather aggressive-looking hedgerows, was slightly more chaotic than the brochure suggested.

The key was in a lockbox, which sounds simple enough unless you are me and have already managed to drop the code into a patch of long grass within approximately four seconds of arrival. There I was, on my hands and knees in front of what I hoped was our cottage and not some confused local's summer house, rummaging about while my youngest helpfully informed passing cyclists that "Daddy has lost the numbers." My partner found them eventually, stuck to a leaf, because of course they were. I maintain the lockbox was unnecessarily fiddly. She maintains I should not be trusted with anything involving combinations.

Stepping inside for the first time was that peculiar holiday cottage moment where everything smells of wood polish and possibility. The place was exactly what we needed, really. Open-plan living area with those big windows that let the Danish light flood in, a kitchen that looked like it had seen plenty of family breakfasts, and bedrooms upstairs with slanted ceilings perfect for bonking your head on when you forget where you are in the night. I did this within the first hour, naturally. There is something deeply humbling about standing in a foreign country holding a bag of frozen peas to your forehead while your children find it the funniest thing they have ever witnessed.

The terrace became our immediate headquarters. The kids were off exploring the garden before I had even worked out how the coffee maker functioned, which involved several false starts and one small flood that I mopped up furtively before anyone noticed. My partner unpacked with that terrifying efficiency she brings to these situations, finding cupboard space I would not have located in a month of looking. I mostly stood about holding things and being directed, which suited me fine.

By late afternoon we had established our positions. The children had claimed the loft bedroom, inevitably, because bunks. I had figured out that the shower ran slightly hot and that there was a barbecue outside that looked like it had cooked a thousand sausages and was ready for a thousand more. My partner had already walked to the end of the lane and back, reporting that there was a proper path to the beach if one did not follow agricultural machinery routes like certain people she could mention.

That first evening we sat on the terrace with mediocre wine and supermarket bread and cheese, watching the Danish sky do that thing where it stays light for ages in a way that still feels faintly magical to British people used to proper darkness by teatime. The kids were filthy from whatever they had been doing in the garden, probably involving a suspicious pond we had agreed to worry about tomorrow. We were all slightly sun-touched and travel-weary and already laughing about my lockbox performance.

I remember thinking, peas on head and all, that this was exactly the sort of holiday we needed. No grand plans, no rushing about, just a slightly wonky wooden cottage in the Danish countryside and a family slowly remembering how to do nothing together. The sheep, I felt, had probably forgiven me. The hedgerow almost certainly had not.