I should have known the holiday had truly begun when I confidently strode up to the wrong cottage, key in hand, and nearly made myself a cup of tea in someone else's kitchen. The woman reading on the veranda looked up with remarkable calm, as if strangers barging in were a daily occurrence at Skastrup Strand. I backpedalled with what I hoped was charming apology, though my Danish extends barely past "tak" and a lot of enthusiastic nodding.

The actual cottage, when I found it three doors down, was a modest wooden affair tucked among pines with a view of the Svendborg Strait that made my navigational incompetence almost worth it. I dumped my bags and immediately set off to explore, armed with a phone map I was determined to ignore. This was meant to be a holiday of accidental discovery, after all. The mishap had simply set the tone.

Skastrup Strand itself is not a place that announces itself. The beach is shingle and quiet, with locals walking dogs and the occasional kayaker slipping past. I wandered south along the shore, missed the turning I intended, and found myself in a small copse where someone had built an elaborate driftwood shelter, complete with a weathered bench facing the water. No plaque, no explanation. Just a perfect secret spot for watching the late afternoon light turn the strait silver-grey. I sat there longer than planned, feeling smug about my navigational failure.

The next morning I cycled out with vague intentions of reaching Troense, the nearby harbour village. I took a wrong fork almost immediately and ended up on a narrow track between apple orchards. Funen is Denmark's garden, they say, and here were the proof: regimented rows of trees heavy with fruit, the air thick with sweetness and bees. The track petered out at a farm gate where an elderly man was repairing a bicycle of antique vintage. He spoke no English, I spoke no Danish, yet through gestures and shared laughter at my useless map, he directed me through his orchard to a lane that emerged, unexpectedly, at a tiny beach I'd never have found deliberately. A handful of locals were swimming, children shrieking at the cold water. I joined them briefly, yelping with the rest.

Troense, when I finally reached it by simply following my nose seaward, felt almost anticlimactic after such accidental riches. Charming, certainly, with its painted houses and harbour restaurants, but I found myself missing the driftwood shelter, the orchard track, the secret beach.

On my final day I deliberately set out to get lost. Abandoned the marked paths entirely, struck inland through woods and emerging farmland, following whatever lane looked least promising. Found a church at Skarby, unlocked and empty, with a ship model hanging from the nave ceiling and a visitors' book going back decades. Signed it with a flourish, feeling like a proper explorer rather than a middle-aged man with a terrible sense of direction.

The train back to Copenhagen left from Svendborg, and I arrived with grass-stained shoes and a pocket full of windfall apples from another wrong turn. The wrong cottage, the wrong paths, the wrong beaches. Every single one of them turned out to be exactly right.