I had been dreaming about Danish pastries for the entire three-hour drive to Limfjorden, which made it all the more gutting when I realised, somewhere past Aalborg, that I'd left our entire bag of groceries on the kitchen table in Aarhus. My partner gave me that look. You know the one. The "we've discussed your brain before" look. There we were, stomachs rumbling, heading to a self-catering cottage on Fur with nothing but a half-eaten packet of wine gums and my misplaced confidence.

The ferry to Fur Island takes barely five minutes, just long enough for me to frantically Google "shops near Fur Denmark" and discover that "near" is a relative concept in these parts. We trundled off the little boat and wound through rolling farmland towards our cottage, the sort of red wooden place that looks plucked from a tourism brochure, complete with a proper kitchen that now seemed to mock us with its unused potential.

Our first mission was survival. The nearest proper supermarket sits back on the mainland in Selde, so we made the ferry trip twice more that afternoon, becoming briefly familiar faces to the bemused deck crew. By our third crossing I'd worked out that the trick is to stand at the front and pretend you're in a very low-budget Nordic film. We stocked up on rye bread, pickled herring, dense Danish cheese, and something called "leverpostej" that I insisted we try despite my partner's visible scepticism.

That first evening, I attempted to cook properly Danish. The cottage kitchen, as it turned out, was genuinely well-equipped, which only highlighted my incompetence. I fried pork belly with crackling, or attempted to. The smoke alarm offered its opinion. The crackling went from pale to carbonised while I was busy wrestling with a jar of remoulade that refused to open. We ate at half past nine, the pork slightly chewy, the potatoes underdone, but the beer cold and the view through the kitchen window spectacular across the grey-green fjord.

Morning brought redemption through simplicity. We cycled to the little harbour at Stenbjerg, where a fishmonger's van appears on certain days with whatever the local boats have landed. I bought smoked mackerel still warm from the smoker, proper dense rye bread from a baker who opens when he feels like it, and we breakfasted on the harbour wall like kings. The mackerel was sensational, oily and fragrant, and I felt briefly competent again.

The pub situation on Fur requires some explaining. There isn't one, not exactly, not in the British sense. What exists instead is a village hall that opens Friday evenings for beer and communal singing, and a restaurant at the ferry landing that serves drinks with meals. We went twice, drinking Danish lagers and eating fried plaice so fresh it practically introduced itself. The second visit, I got chatting with a local who explained, in excellent English, that I'd been pronouncing "Limfjorden" incorrectly for three days. He was gentle about it. I bought him a beer.

Back at the cottage, I gradually improved. By day four I could manage a decent smorrebrod, those open sandwiches piled with egg and shrimp and dill. I found eggs from a honesty box down the lane, still warm from the hens. The local dairy sold butter that actually tasted of something. I made a fish soup with the last of our smoked mackerel, and my partner declared it "almost professional," which I choose to interpret as genuine praise.

We never did master the leverpostej. It sat in the fridge, slowly drying out, a monument to ambition over ability. Some things, I reflected, watching the ferry trundle back and forth from our kitchen window, are best left to people who understand what they're doing. The holiday taught me that much, between meals.