I have never been so relieved to see a set of patio doors in my life. After six hours of driving from Esbjerg, convinced my sat nav had developed a personal vendetta against me, I finally pulled into Hostrup Strand and immediately reversed into a wooden post that had been doing absolutely nothing wrong. The crunch was modest. My dignity was not.

The cottage itself, though, made up for it within about thirty seconds. I stepped inside, still muttering apologies to an inanimate object, and was met by that particular hush that only proper coastal silence brings. Limfjorden stretched out beyond the windows, grey and glittering, doing that thing where the water looks almost smug about being prettier than whatever you have left behind. I had planned this as a walking holiday. Aggressively planned it, if I am honest. Printed maps, highlighted routes, packed two pairs of boots in case one developed what my mother calls "attitude." The Danish weather, I had told friends back in Manchester, would be bracing. Refreshing. Nothing like our drizzle. I was, it turns out, a fool.

The first morning I set out towards what the local information folder called an "easy coastal stroll." The folder lied. Within twenty minutes the sky had lowered itself like a disapproving aunt, and what had been a light breeze became something that genuinely pushed me sideways. I found myself gripping a fence post, laughing into the wind, already soaked through the supposedly waterproof jacket I had paid too much for in Keswick. I turned back. The cottage, visible now as a distant smudge of yellow, had never looked so welcoming.

I developed a system over the following days. Mornings began with coffee and stern consultation of weather apps, each promising slightly different versions of impending doom. When the clouds lifted even marginally, I bolted. One afternoon I managed nearly two hours along the shoreline path towards the small harbour area, the mudflats exposed and strange, curlews calling overhead in that melancholy way they have. The light kept changing, silver to pewter to something almost warm, and I walked faster than I needed to, greedy for distance before the next front arrived.

The rain that caught me that day was different. Softer, somehow more patient. I sheltered under a boat shed roof, watching the fjord disappear into mist, and felt that particular British mixture of thwarted ambition and secret contentment. This was not the walking holiday I had imagined. I had pictured crisp air, long views, perhaps a flattering photograph on a clifftop. Instead I got mud, uncertainty, and a developing expertise in the exact drying time of thermal socks draped over a radiator.

On my final morning the weather broke properly. I walked for three hours without interruption, out past the holiday homes and into the flatter land beyond, where the hedgerows thin and you can feel the openness of the fjord landscape proper. My boots were still damp from three days earlier. I did not care. A heron lifted from a ditch, heavy and unhurried. The path curved back towards the water, and I could see the cottage again, small and bright against the grey.

I arrived back with blisters, a slight limp, and absolutely no photographs worth showing anyone. The wooden post still bore my paintwork, a small memorial to my arrival. I made tea, sat by those patio doors, and watched another band of rain sweep in from the north. It would have been a different holiday in sunshine, I suppose. I am not sure it would have been a better one.