I should have known the holiday was going to be eventful when I managed to leave my car keys on the kitchen table in Milton Keynes. There I was, three hours from home, standing at a petrol station near Odense with a boot full of suitcases and a sinking feeling in my stomach. My partner looked at me with that particular expression that says both "I love you" and "you are an absolute liability." A very kind Danish chap with a magnificent moustache lent me his phone, and after some frantic calls, my neighbour posted the spare set to the cottage. I spent the first day of our break buying an absurdly expensive coffee every two hours just to use the cafe wifi and check tracking updates.

Still, the drive to Hasmark Strand itself was glorious once we finally got moving properly. Funen rolls along like a gentle green wave, all patchwork fields and tidy farmhouses with red roofs. You half expect to see Hans Christian Andersen himself strolling down a lane with a notebook. The cottage complex sat tucked behind low dunes, little wooden boxes painted in that cheerful butter-yellow and deep red that Scandinavians seem to have copyrighted.

Our first morning, I wandered down to the little beach shop for milk and immediately fell into conversation with Bent, a retired fisherman who ran the place with the relaxed pace of a man who had never once in his life checked his email. He told me about the summer houses, how families had been coming to Hasmark Strand for generations, how his own grandfather had built the original jetty that still jutted into the Kattegat. "You English," he said, eyeing my attempts to pronounce "tak" with something between amusement and pity, "you always try too hard. Just say 'tak,' not 'tahhhk.' Like you're thanking a cat." He demonstrated with a little clicking sound. I practised for several minutes while other customers edged past me to buy their ice creams.

That afternoon we met Lise, who cleaned the neighbouring cottage and had apparently appointed herself unofficial welcome committee for the entire row. She appeared at our door with a plate of something she called "drømmekage" and immediately began rearranging our outdoor furniture. "You have it all wrong," she declared, despite our not having touched it yet. "The wind comes this way in evening. You want to sit here, with the wall behind you, and then you can drink your wine without sand in it." She had the authoritative manner of someone who had spent forty summers watching tourists make the same mistakes. We obeyed instantly. The cake was extraordinary, sticky with caramel and coconut, and she nodded with satisfaction as we ate it in our newly assigned positions.

The local supermarket, a ten-minute cycle along a flat lane bordered with wild roses, became another source of accidental friendship. The woman on the checkout, whose name badge read "Gitte" but who everyone simply called "the queen," took personal offence at my attempt to buy pre-sliced bread. "This?" she said, holding the plastic packet like it might contaminate her scanner. "You are on holiday. You have time. You buy proper bread." She reached behind her and produced a dense, seeded loaf from the bakery section, still warm. "I see you tomorrow, you tell me if this is better." I did see her tomorrow, and the day after, and by the third visit she was asking after my key situation and offering opinions on the ferry timetable back to Germany.

Evening brought the most unexpected character: a lanky teenager called Magnus who fished from the rocks each sunset and spoke English with the precise, slightly old-fashioned cadence of someone who had learned it from BBC period dramas. He lectured me at length on the correct technique for catching flatfish, became genuinely distressed when I admitted I had no intention of fishing, and then insisted on showing me his collection of perfectly smooth stones he had gathered from beaches all along the Funen coast. "Each one has a face if you look properly," he said, with the utter sincerity of youth. I spent twenty minutes examining grey pebbles with him, and damned if he wasn't right about several.

By the time my spare keys finally arrived, couriered to the post office in nearby Otterup where another cheerful local called Per made me sign three different forms with theatrical solemnity, I felt almost disappointed. The mishap had forced me out of my usual holiday routine of efficient sightseeing and into something far better: the slow, meandering business of actually meeting a place through its people. I still say "tahhhk" sometimes, just to make Bent laugh.