I have never been so relieved to see a set of windbreaks in my entire life. There we were, three hours into what should have been a straightforward drive from Copenhagen Airport to Falster, and I had just confidently steered our hire car onto a dirt track that Google Maps assured me was a "scenic shortcut." It was scenic, I'll give it that. Scenically full of chickens. And a very unimpressed man in overalls who watched me perform a seventeen-point turn while my wife quietly studied the map and our youngest asked, for the fourteenth time, whether we were nearly at the beach.

The thing about a family holiday is that the chaos starts before you've even arrived. We'd packed for every eventuality: sun cream, waterproofs, board games, fourteen types of snack, and a inflatable flamingo that my daughter had insisted was "essential." What we had not packed, crucially, was my ability to read Danish road signs under pressure.

But then we found it. Marielyst. Properly this time, via actual tarmac. And I will tell you now, pulling up to that little wooden cottage with its neat red trim and the smell of pine everywhere, something in my shoulders finally dropped. The place looked exactly like the pictures, which in my experience of holiday bookings is roughly as likely as winning the lottery. There was a proper little garden, a terrace with a barbecue that had clearly seen some action, and beyond the dunes you could just make out the Baltic glinting in the late afternoon light.

My wife went in first, as is tradition, to perform what she calls "a recce" and what I call "judging whether I have booked us into a shed." She emerged with that particular expression she gets when she is pleasantly surprised but does not want me to become insufferable about it. "It's nice," she said, which from her is roughly equivalent to a five-star review. The children had already vanished inside, and I could hear the unmistakable sound of them fighting over who got which bedroom.

I stood there on that little terrace with a cup of tea that tasted slightly of the thermos it came in, and I watched a herring gull perform what I can only describe as an aggressive patrol of the neighbouring garden. The light was doing that soft Scandinavian thing, all gold and stretched-out shadows, and somewhere a dog was barking in a relaxed, unconcerned manner. I thought about the chickens. I thought about my terrible navigation. I thought about how we would probably laugh about it eventually, once the embarrassment had faded and my wife stopped giving me that look.

The cottage itself had that particular Danish knack of being both simple and exactly right. Clean lines, decent sofas, a kitchen that actually had sharp knives for once. Nothing fancy, nothing trying too hard. Just a solid, comfortable place to base yourself while you did the important things: walked to the beach, ate too much pastry from the local bakery, argued about whose turn it was to buy the milk.

That first evening, we did not do anything remarkable. We unpacked badly, found a supermarket, bought things we did not need. The children discovered the garden and immediately began a complicated game involving a football and rules that changed every thirty seconds. I stood at the kitchen window, watching them, and felt that particular shift that happens on a proper family holiday. The slowing down. The realisation that you do not need to be anywhere or achieve anything. Just be here, in this slightly chaotic, slightly imperfect moment, with the people you have chosen to get lost with.

The flamingo, incidentally, stayed deflated in the car for three days. Nobody noticed.