I should have known the holiday was going to be characterful when I forgot to pack my own wellies and had to borrow a pair from the cottage that were two sizes too big. There I was, clomping through Spodsbjerg like a lost flamingo, my feet sliding about in bright green rubber while the March wind did its best to rearrange my hair into something resembling a seabird's nest.

The journey down from Copenhagen had been straightforward enough, though I did manage to miss the turn for the ferry and found myself doing an awkward loop through Svendborg while the satnav made that disapproving blooping noise it does when you've disappointed it. By the time I reached the Langeland bridge, the afternoon light was already starting to soften, and I could see the bare branches of the roadside trees swaying in that restless way they have before spring truly commits to arriving.

Pulling up to Spodsbjerg, I was struck by how the house sat so quietly in its coastal setting, almost as if it were listening to the sea rather than simply facing it. The traditional thatched roof gave it a storybook quality, though the practical Danish design inside was anything but whimsical. Large windows framed a view of the Belt that seemed to change colour by the minute, grey-green one moment, silvered the next as the clouds shifted and the water responded.

March in Langeland Tasinge is not a time for guaranteed sunshine, and I had made my peace with that before arriving. What I had not fully appreciated was how the season would become the main character of the entire stay. The heating was already on when I stepped inside, that particular warmth of a house that knows its purpose is shelter. I spent the first evening not venturing out at all, but simply watching the light fade over the water while wearing two jumpers and clutching a cup of tea that cooled faster than I could drink it.

The next morning brought that particular quality of early spring light that makes everything look slightly tentative, as if the world is not quite sure whether to wake up properly. I did attempt the coastal path, my borrowed wellies squelching with every step, the mud still heavy from winter rains. The beaches were empty in that glorious Scandinavian way, just me and a few hardy gulls who seemed to be debating whether I was worth investigating.

What struck me most was how the season forced a slower pace. In summer, I suspect one might rush between activities, swimming and sailing and cycling with that holiday urgency to pack everything in. But March demanded a different relationship with the place. I walked when the weather allowed, retreated when it turned, and found myself noticing things I might otherwise have missed. The particular way the thatch smelled after rain. How the light caught the water at certain hours. The silence, which was not empty but full of small sounds, wind and water and the occasional distant engine.

By the time I left, the daffodils were just beginning to show yellow at the edges of the garden, and I felt oddly proprietorial about them, as if I had somehow earned the right to anticipate their blooming. I returned the wellies with genuine reluctance, my own shoes feeling suddenly too small, too ordinary, too much like returning to a version of myself that did not clomp about Danish coastlines pretending to be a flamingo.

The season had given me what I had not known I needed, permission to be still, to let a place unfold at its own pace rather than mine, and to find that the grey days were every bit as memorable as the bright ones, though in a quieter, more stubborn sort of way.