I have never been brilliant with ferries. There I was, sat in the queue at Puttgarden, absolutely convinced I had another twenty minutes to nip to the loo and buy a very overpriced coffee. Next thing I know, the bloke in the high-vis is waving his arms like I am personally ruining his entire morning, and I am sprinting back across the car deck with my fly half-undone and a paper cup of scalding latte threatening to dissolve my hand. Made it, obviously. But dignity? Left somewhere near the duty-free.

The crossing itself was mercifully brief, and then there was the drive down through Lolland, which is flat in that reassuring Danish way, all fields and big skies and the occasional farmhouse looking like it has been there since someone first thought "perhaps we should keep cows." I had the windows down and some terrible playlist going, feeling terribly continental, until I realised I had absolutely no idea where I was actually going. Phone signal was patchy. The sat nav kept suggesting I turn into what was clearly a beet field. Very Lolland, that. Sugar beet everywhere. You will learn to respect the beet.

I found the place eventually, down a little lane near Hummingen, and pulled up to what the website had promised was a traditional Danish holiday home. What they had not fully conveyed was the smell. Not a bad smell, mind you. Just this extraordinary, almost aggressive freshness. Salt and pine and something vaguely agricultural. I stood there with my suitcase, breathing it in like an idiot, until an elderly chap appeared from next door and observed me with the tolerant expression of someone who has watched many Brits stand in his driveway looking confused.

"You are the English," he said. Not a question. A statement of mild concern.

I admitted it. He nodded slowly, as if this explained everything, and introduced himself as Erik. He was seventy-ish, wearing what I can only describe as extremely committed gardening clothes, and he immediately began telling me about the septic tank. Not in a boring way. With genuine passion. The history of it, the maintenance schedule, a slight feud with a previous guest who had apparently flushed something unspeakable. I stood there, jet-lagged and ferry-traumatised, nodding along to septic tank lore like it was the most fascinating thing I had ever heard. Which, in that moment, it rather was.

Erik's wife, Birgit, emerged shortly after with two cups of coffee and the kind of straightforward kindness that makes you slightly emotional for no reason you can name. She spoke less English than Erik, which meant our conversation became this wonderful hybrid of his translation, my terrible attempts at Danish pronunciation, and a lot of pointing. She wanted to know if I liked fish. Specifically, if I liked herring. There seemed to be only one acceptable answer. I gave it. She looked satisfied.

They left me eventually, after a thorough tour that included which windows stuck, where the best beach access was, and a detailed warning about a local cat of "uncertain ownership" who would try to move in if I showed any weakness. I unpacked slowly, still half-laughing at the whole encounter. There is something about arriving somewhere new, slightly dishevelled, and being absorbed into someone else's ordinary day that strips away any pretence you might have brought with you. I had planned to seem sophisticated, maybe slightly mysterious. Instead I had arrived flushed and caffeine-damaged, been identified as "the English" within seconds, and been thoroughly briefed on wastewater management.

I made myself a cup of tea that evening, sat on the little wooden deck, and watched the light do that long, slow fade that happens up here in summer. The cat appeared, predictably, and I pretended not to see it. Somewhere distant, a dog barked, and another answered. The beet fields stretched away, green and implacable. I thought about Erik's certainty, Birgit's coffee, the ferry man still probably telling colleagues about the idiot with the latte. Travel does this, I think. It does not care about your plans for sophistication. It gives you people instead, in all their specific, unvarnished particularity, and somehow that is always better than anything you could have arranged.

The cat was on my lap before I finished the tea. I had shown weakness. There was nothing to be done.