I have never been so grateful to see a gravel driveway in all my life. After four hours of driving from Copenhagen, two wrong turns near Rudkobing, and one spectacular argument with a sat nav that insisted Danish farm tracks were proper roads, we finally crunched to a halt outside the Stoense Udfl. My partner had spent the last twenty minutes in stony silence, clutching the door handle every time the car lurched over another pothole. I had spent it making cheerful comments about the scenery, which apparently made everything worse.

The mishap came thirty seconds after we stepped out. I was stretching my legs, breathing in that particular smell of Danish countryside, sea salt and cow parsley, when I realised the key safe code was on my phone. Which was in the car. Which I had just locked. With the keys still dangling in the ignition, plainly visible through the windscreen like a small metal taunt. My partner looked at me. I looked at the locked car. A blackbird somewhere in the hedge made a noise that definitely sounded like laughter.

Forty minutes later, a very kind neighbour with a coat hanger and the patience of a saint had us inside. I have never been more relieved to drop a suitcase in a hallway. And what a hallway it was, all pale wood and that particular hush that proper Danish cottages seem to have, as if the walls themselves are suggesting you lower your voice.

The Stoense Udfl. sits in Langeland Tasinge with the kind of garden that makes you immediately abandon any plans you might have had. Ours had been modest enough, a walk to the beach, perhaps a cycle, definitely some sightseeing. The garden killed them all within an hour. It wraps around the house in that effortless Scandinavian way, not manicured exactly but somehow perfectly arranged, with old fruit trees and a patch of longer grass where butterflies were conducting some important business. We found two weathered wooden chairs under an apple tree and that was essentially the end of our itinerary.

I had brought three books, which seemed excessive at the time. I finished two and started the third twice because I kept dozing off in the same place. The garden changed character through the day, morning sun on the little patio where we drank coffee slower than we ever do at home, afternoon shade moving across the lawn like a clock we stopped checking. There is something deeply satisfying about watching nothing happen in a place where nothing is expected to happen. A snail crossed a paving stone one afternoon. I mention this because I watched it in its entirety, something I have not done since I was about eight, and I cannot tell you if twenty minutes passed or an hour.

The house itself encourages this kind of behaviour. The kitchen window frames the garden like a painting someone keeps subtly altering. I spent a lot of time at that window, waiting for the kettle, watching the light change on the leaves. The living room has that particular Danish talent for being simple without being cold, and we spent one entire rainy day there, me on the sofa with my book, my partner doing a puzzle she found in a cupboard, both of us occasionally commenting on how the rain sounded different there, though neither of us could explain how.

I did walk to the end of the garden on the second day, which felt like quite the expedition. There is a little gate, and beyond it fields that roll down towards the sea, distant enough to promise nothing more strenuous than a pleasant view. I leaned on that gate for a while, doing absolutely nothing, and it struck me that this was the first holiday in years where I had not felt some vague obligation to be improving myself, seeing things, having experiences worth mentioning later. The experience was the leaning. The experience was the not mentioning.

We cooked simple meals, ate outside when the weather allowed, inside when it did not, never with any particular urgency. The local shop in Stoense supplied bread and cheese and not much else, which was precisely enough. I cannot tell you anything remarkable about that week, and that is the whole point. I came home with no stories to speak of, no photographs worth showing, and a peculiar lightness that has taken longer than usual to wear off.

The car, incidentally, stayed unlocked for the remainder of the holiday.