I should have known the holiday proper started the moment I trusted Google Maps over my own common sense. There I was, bombing up the Aalborg motorway with a boot full of Tesco meal deal remnants and an unshakeable belief that I knew precisely where Albaek Strand lay. Reader, I did not. Somewhere between Frederikshavn and what felt like the absolute middle of nowhere, my satnav developed what I can only describe as an existential crisis and deposited me down a gravel track flanked by pine trees that looked like they'd been planted during the Viking era.

The mishap? I emerged, dusty and slightly hysterical, at what turned out to be a farm shop selling nothing but potatoes and homemade rhubarb juice. I bought both out of sheer awkwardness. The farmer, a chap called Knud with eyebrows like hedgerows, found my predicament so amusing that he personally escorted me back to civilisation in his ancient Volvo, rhubarb juice rolling about my footwell like a drunken passenger. We communicated in broken Danish, worse English, and the universal language of pointing at road signs.

By the time I actually found the holiday home at Albaek Strand, I'd already experienced more of North Jutland than I'd bargained for. And honestly? That accidental detour set the tone for everything brilliant that followed.

The house itself materialised through another unintended wander. I'd taken a wrong turn seeking the official path and stumbled upon the beach access from the rear, approaching the property from the dunes rather than the road. There it sat, weatherboarded and unassuming, with a view of the Kattegat that made me physically stop walking. I stood there with my suitcase, potato bag clutched like a talisman, and felt that particular hush that only comes from accidentally discovering something rather than arriving by plan.

The first evening, determined to redeem my navigation skills, I set out for what I believed was a straightforward coastal walk. Twenty minutes later I was hopelessly lost among the summer houses, each identical wooden cottage blurring into the next. Panic rose briefly, then curiosity. I followed a narrow path that looked unofficial, squeezing between two garden hedges, and emerged onto a miniature cove I'd never have found deliberately. Locals apparently called it "the pocket beach," though how anyone local enough to name it found it either, I've no idea. I sat on driftwood and watched the light change across the water, entirely alone, feeling smug as a cat who's stolen cream.

That became my method. Each morning I'd set off with vague intentions and deliberately poor attention to direction. The results were extraordinary. A bakery in what I can only describe as someone's converted garage, discovered after taking a wrong fork toward the supposed village centre. The bread was still warm, the owner deeply unbothered by my appearance, the cinnamon rolls life-altering. A freshwater lake, invisible from any main route, where I swam among reeds and startled a heron into dramatic, affronted flight.

The genuine Albaek village, when I eventually found it properly, felt almost too discovered by comparison. Charming, certainly, with its harbour and sensible Danish orderliness, but I found myself missing the accidental quality of my other haunts. I'd become addicted to the slightly anxious thrill of not knowing precisely where I stood.

My final accidental discovery came on the last morning. Attempting a shortcut to the beach I'd first stumbled upon, I became entangled in a network of sandy paths behind the dunes. Emerging breathless and mildly scratched, I found a small wooden bench facing east, positioned with such precise intention for sunrise viewing that someone had clearly placed it with care. Yet it bore no plaque, no path leading directly to it, no indication it existed for anyone but whoever happened to wander past. I sat there for an hour, watching fishing boats trace the horizon, and understood something about my whole ridiculous week.

I'd arrived believing holidays required competent arrival, planned excursions, the satisfying tick of expectations met. Instead, North Jutland had gently taught me that my worst navigational instincts led to my finest moments. The getting lost wasn't failure. It was the entire point.

I left that bench reluctantly, found my way back through pure luck, and packed my car with considerably more rhubarb juice than any reasonable person requires. Knud's eyebrows would have approved.