I have never been quite so grateful to see a set of windmills in my entire life. There they were, turning lazily on the horizon as our little ferry chugged across from Esbjerg, and I remember thinking, "Right, we've made it, how hard can the rest be?" Reader, I was about to find out.

The trouble began with the key safe. Our host had sent perfectly clear instructions, but I had committed the cardinal sin of holiday letting: I assumed I knew better. Somewhere between the ferry terminal and our cottage in Nordby, I had managed to save the wrong code into my phone. Three attempts later, the safe made a rather judgmental clicking noise and refused to cooperate entirely. My partner stood there with two suitcases, a bag of Danish pastries we had panic-bought at the harbour, and that particular expression of British restraint that says "I am not saying I told you so, but I absolutely did."

We stood in the gravel driveway of what I can only describe as the most charmingly Danish cottage I have ever failed to enter. White wooden cladding, a proper thatched roof, the whole hygge fantasy laid out before us. And there we were, locked out, with the pastries growing increasingly less fresh by the minute.

I had to make the call. You know the one. The slightly breathless apology to a perfectly pleasant Danish person who has clearly never encountered someone quite this incompetent with a four-digit code. She was kind about it, bless her, though I suspect she has a folder of these stories by now. The correct code, it turned out, was the one in the original email. The one I had not opened. The pastries, by this point, had achieved a texture I can only describe as "challenging."

Stepping inside was like walking into one of those interior magazines I pretend not to look at in the dentist. Exposed wooden beams, a wood-burning stove that looked like it had been waiting specifically for my ego to need soothing, and windows that framed the dunes beyond like a painting. The mishap melted away, as these things do, replaced by the particular satisfaction of finally being somewhere that smells of pine and salt and slightly old thatch.

I immediately attempted to light the stove to celebrate our victory. This resulted in approximately twenty minutes of amateur chimney inspection, some mild swearing, and the realisation that Danish firelighters are not, in fact, identical to British ones. My partner retreated to the kitchen with the pastries and what I suspect was a deliberate lack of intervention.

The cottage had that wonderful layered feeling of a place that has actually been lived in, not just staged for photographs. Books in Danish and German on the shelves, a slightly wonky chess set on the side table, windows that opened with the kind of satisfying weight that modern fittings never quite achieve. I found myself wandering from room to room, opening cupboards like a nosy relative, discovering board games with missing pieces and a deck of cards softened by years of summer evenings.

By the time I had wrestled the stove into something approaching a flame, the light was doing that extraordinary Nordic thing where it hangs around for hours, refusing to properly set. We took our lukewarm tea and significantly less fresh pastries onto the little wooden terrace, and there was Fanø laid out before us: flat and green and somehow both spacious and intimate, the kind of landscape that makes you feel pleasantly insignificant.

I thought about the key safe, and the firelighters, and my stubborn refusal to read an email properly. There is something about arriving somewhere new that strips away whatever competent adult persona you have constructed. You are reduced to basics: shelter, warmth, whether you have packed enough socks. It is humbling, and rather wonderful, and I would not have it any other way.

The pastries, incidentally, were still delicious.