I have never been particularly gifted at reading maps, which is how I found myself reversing down a narrow lane in Lolland convinced I had accidentally driven into someone's private farmyard. The satnav had given up on me somewhere near Maribo, and my phone was insisting I was standing in the middle of the Baltic Sea. In truth, I was merely parked beside a very large and unimpressed-looking goose. We stared at each other for what felt like several minutes before I accepted that I would need to ask for directions in my dreadful schoolboy Danish.

The cottage in Hummingen, when I finally located it, appeared like something from a particularly well-organised dream. A traditional thatched-roof place with whitewashed walls and a garden that had clearly been loved by someone with infinite patience and a good pair of secateurs. I had planned an ambitious itinerary of local attractions. Museums, nature reserves, perhaps a spot of cycling along the coast. None of this happened.

The garden was my undoing. On that first morning, I carried my coffee outside intending merely to survey my surroundings, and somehow three hours dissolved. There was a wooden bench positioned at precisely the correct angle for catching the sun, and a small apple tree that attracted what I can only describe as an unreasonable number of bees. I watched them with the fascination of a person who has forgotten how to be bored. A blackbird landed on the lawn, performed a small dance, and departed. I felt honoured.

By afternoon I had located a hammock strung between two trees at the garden's far end. This discovery proved catastrophic for my productivity. I had brought three books with the optimistic intention of reading them all. I managed perhaps twelve pages of the first one over the course of a week, not from any lack of interest in the plot, but because I kept falling asleep or becoming distracted by clouds. There is a particular quality to the light in Lolland, soft and somehow generous, that makes sustained concentration feel almost impolite.

The cottage itself encouraged this slothful behaviour. The kitchen window framed the garden like a living painting. I found myself washing up slowly, deliberately, watching a robin investigate the patio. The living room had a wood-burning stove that I never actually lit, preferring instead to simply look at it and imagine how cosy it would be. There was something deeply satisfying about this hypothetical cosiness, more satisfying perhaps than the actual warmth would have provided.

I did venture to the nearby beach on my third day, a ten-minute stroll that I stretched to twenty by stopping to examine every wildflower I did not recognise. The beach was quiet, scattered with smooth stones and the occasional piece of driftwood worn into abstract sculpture. I collected three particularly fine stones and carried them home like treasure, though I have no idea what I intended to do with them. They sit now on my windowsill in London, and I am no closer to an answer.

On my final morning, I realised with some surprise that I had not once checked my work emails. This had not required any particular discipline. The thought had simply never occurred to me. I sat with this revelation for a while, neither pleased nor guilty, merely observing it as one might observe weather. The blackbird returned to the lawn, perhaps the same one, perhaps an entirely different bird with identical choreography. I did not mind the ambiguity.

Driving away, I caught myself calculating how soon I might reasonably return. The goose, I noted with satisfaction, was nowhere to be seen.