I have never been so relieved to see a wooden beach hut in my life. After six hours of driving from Esbjerg, two wrong turns near Odense, and one spectacular argument with a sat nav that insisted Tarup Strand was "in the sea, turn around," we finally crunched onto the gravel drive of our little holiday home. I stepped out of the car, stretched my back with an audible click that made my daughter wince, and promptly walked straight into a clothesline I had not seen. My sunglasses went flying. My dignity went with them. The neighbours, two elderly Danes in deckchairs, applauded politely. Welcome to Funen.

The cottage itself was exactly the sort of understated Scandinavian charm I had hoped for. Weathered wood, a steep roof, and windows that looked like they had framed a thousand grey dawns over the Lillebaelt. My wife immediately fell in love with the tiny porch. My son fell in love with the fact that mobile signal was patchy enough to excuse him from everything. I fell in love with the kettle, because I needed tea before I could process any of it.

Inside smelled of pine and salt and that particular mustiness of holiday homes everywhere, the kind that tells you a thousand families have cooked bacon here slightly wrong. The kitchen was compact to the point of comedy. I am a man who likes to spread out when he cooks, and here I could reach the fridge, the hob, and the sink simultaneously without moving my feet. My daughter declared it "cosy." I declared it "a test of my spatial awareness." We were both right.

The real discovery came when I tried to light the wood-burning stove. The instructions were in Danish, German, and what I can only describe as optimistic pictograms. I spent twenty minutes arranging kindling with the concentration of a bomb disposal expert, struck a match, and produced a room full of smoke and no flame. My wife opened every window. The smoke alarm, which I had not noticed, noticed me. It screamed. The elderly neighbours applauded again. I have no idea if this was their standard greeting or if I was simply providing the afternoon entertainment.

By evening, though, the stove was purring, the windows were closed, and someone had opened the wine. We sat around the little dining table with its view of the strait, watching the light fade over the water in that slow, watercolour way that Denmark does so well. The mishaps of arrival already felt like part of the furniture, stories we would tell rather than regrets we would nurse.

I found myself thinking, not for the first time, how much of family holidays is this exact rhythm. The chaos of getting there. The comedy of not knowing how anything works. The gradual surrender to doing less, being slower, accepting that your cooking will be mediocre and your fire-lighting worse. Tarup Strand was not offering us glamour. It was offering us a wooden hut, a pebble beach, and permission to be slightly incompetent together.

The next morning I walked down to the shore before anyone else woke. The water was flat grey, the sky was flat grey, a heron stood in the shallows like it was waiting for something. I stood there too, breathing cold air, listening to nothing much. My sunglasses were still somewhere in the garden. I did not look for them. Some things you let go of. Some things you find again without trying. The heron flew off. I went back to make tea in my tiny kitchen, and I did not hit my head on anything once. Progress.