I have never been someone who trusts a sat nav unconditionally, and my trip to Bredfjed on Lolland proved me absolutely right in the most ridiculous way possible. I had punched in the postcode for our holiday cottage, set off from Copenhagen with a car full of snacks and misplaced confidence, and promptly found myself directed down a farm track that terminated in a field of extremely judgmental geese. The sat nav, in its infinite wisdom, had decided the most efficient route involved what I can only describe as an impromptu ornithological encounter. I reversed with as much dignity as one can muster while being honked at by poultry, eventually spotting a weathered wooden sign for Bredfjed pointing in precisely the opposite direction.

This set the tone rather beautifully for a holiday that would be defined not by plans but by glorious, accidental discoveries.

The cottage itself, when I finally arrived, was one of those traditional Danish summerhouses perched among windswept pines with a view across the Baltic that made the goose incident feel like necessary character building. White-painted wood, a steeply pitched roof, and a deck that creaked satisfyingly underfoot. I dumped my bags with the reckless abandon of someone who had earned their arrival through adversity, then immediately set out to explore with absolutely no agenda beyond seeing where my feet might take me.

Bredfjed is not a place that announces itself. It occupies that wonderful Danish coastal territory where holiday homes cluster among low dunes and small harbours doze in the salt air. I wandered down what I thought was a path to the beach and instead found myself in a small copse where someone, years ago, had constructed an elaborate rope swing from a sturdy beech branch. The rope had weathered to silver grey, the seat was a polished slice of trunk, and it hung there like a secret waiting for whoever happened to stumble upon it. I spent twenty minutes swinging with the unselfconscious joy of a person who has not seen another human for half an hour, watching the canopy sway above me and feeling genuinely uncertain whether this was technically someone's private garden or simply a gift from the universe.

The next morning I attempted a straightforward walk to the harbour and took a wrong turn at a fork where both paths looked identically sandy and inviting. This error delivered me to a small clearing where an elderly gentleman was tending what could only be described as an outdoor museum of maritime salvage. Rusted anchors, a glass-floored dinghy filled with rainwater and lily pads, a lighthouse lamp the size of a dustbin. He spoke limited English, I speak catastrophic Danish, and yet we passed twenty minutes in companionable mutual incomprehension, gesturing at objects and exchanging appreciative noises. He pressed upon me a windfall apple from his pocket, which I ate on the walk back and which remains the best apple I have ever tasted, though I concede context may influence this judgment.

By day three I had abandoned any pretence of purposeful exploration. I would set out with a water bottle and the vague intention of finding breakfast, then follow whatever path seemed least promising. This strategy led me to a hollow in the dunes where the grass grew in peculiar swirling patterns, apparently shaped by decades of coastal wind into natural amphitheatre seating. I sat there for an hour watching a single sailing boat negotiate the horizon and felt the particular peace that comes from knowing precisely where you are while having no idea where that actually is in any geographical sense.

The local shop in Bredfjed, when I eventually located it through another accidental detour, sold freshly smoked fish from a counter that looked unchanged since the seventies. The woman running it directed me to a swimming spot she described as "where the German tourists never find," which turned out to be a narrow inlet where the water ran improbably clear and warm in the shallows. I floated there like a contented starfish, reflecting that my complete inability to follow directions had become the entire point of the holiday.

What struck me most about Lolland was how generously it rewards the lost. There are no dramatic peaks or famous landmarks demanding your attention. Instead there are these modest, unexpected pleasures: a rope swing in a wood, a smokehouse with perfect herring, a dune hollow that feels designed for contemplation. I found myself wondering how much I miss in ordinary life by being too efficient, too directed, too convinced that the planned route is the correct one.

On my final evening I attempted to find the harbour restaurant I had spotted on my first accidental ramble. Naturally I got lost again, found myself on a lane that narrowed to a track that terminated at a small cemetery overlooking the sea. The light was that particular Scandinavian gold that lasts for hours in late summer, and the gravestones, weathered and tilting, faced the water as if keeping watch. I stayed longer than I intended, not from any morbid impulse but because it was so unexpectedly beautiful, so perfectly still, so entirely unconnected to anything I had planned to do.

I never did find that harbour restaurant. I ate bread and cheese on the cottage deck and watched the sky perform its slow colour shift from apricot to lavender to something approaching midnight blue. The sat nav sat ignored in my bag, its authority permanently diminished by geese.

Some holidays you return from with photographs of famous views and ticked boxes. I returned from Bredfjed with a pocketful of windfall apples, sand in my shoes from beaches I cannot name, and the certain knowledge that my worst navigational instincts had delivered my best holiday in years.