The SatNav had other ideas about how to reach Tørreso Strand, which is how I ended up on a farm track staring at a very patient horse who clearly had seen this all before. Forty minutes of creative Danish navigation later, I finally spotted the proper turning and the little cluster of wooden cottages tucked between the trees and the water.

I had promised myself this week would be different. No itineraries, no "popping to" anywhere, no sense that I ought to be achieving something. Just me, a borrowed cottage, and the radical notion of doing absolutely nothing on purpose.

The key was under the flowerpot exactly as promised. I let myself in and stood there with my rucksack still on, breathing in that particular smell of Scandinavian summer house: slightly woody, faintly of last year's beach towels, completely glorious. The living room opened straight onto a small wooden deck, and beyond that, a garden that had clearly given up on being tidy decades ago. Long grass, wild roses clambering over a fence, a single weathered bench facing south. Someone had left a paperback in the drawer, spine cracked, pages soft from humidity. I took this as a sign.

My first morning, I woke without an alarm for the first time in months. The light through the thin curtains was that particular silvery Danish brightness that makes nine o'clock feel like a reasonable achievement. I made terrible coffee in the small kitchen, spilling grounds on the counter because the jar lid stuck, then took my mug outside in my socks. The grass was already warm. A blackbird was having opinions in the hedge. I sat on the bench and watched a fishing boat putter across the sound, moving so slowly I could track its progress by the changing angle of its wake.

By midday I had read three chapters of the borrowed book, forgotten most of what happened in them, and not cared in the slightest. I made open sandwiches for lunch, standing at the kitchen window, eating slowly and watching a bumblebee the size of a marble work its way through the clover. The afternoon dissolved into a doze on the deck, book splayed on my chest, waking only when a gust of wind turned a page for me.

There is a particular guilt to doing nothing, I have found. It sits in the chest like indigestion, this sense that one ought to be walking somewhere, seeing something, at very least photographing one's surroundings for later proof of having been present. I felt it that first afternoon, a restlessness in my legs, an urge to check my phone for entertainment options within driving distance. I made myself stay on the deck. The restlessness passed, eventually, like a wave that decides the shore is too much bother.

The garden became my world. I learned which patch of grass stayed driest after dew, where the afternoon sun lingered longest, which corner the wind avoided. I moved my chair twice daily to follow the light. I finished the borrowed book and started it again, because I had not been paying proper attention the first time and because there was no reason not to. I watched the horse chestnut tree drop its conkers, one by one, with the unhurried patience of something that has nowhere else to be.

On my final morning, I packed my bag with the same inefficiency I had approached everything else that week. The borrowed book went back in the drawer, slightly more worn, slightly more loved. I stood in the garden for a last few minutes, listening to the blackbird, watching the fishing boat make its slow crossing again, or perhaps a different boat, or perhaps the same one from the beginning of the week, time having become as elastic as my reading comprehension.

The horse was not present to witness my departure, which felt correct. Some farewells are better left unobserved.