I have never been brilliant with directions, so it will surprise absolutely no one that I managed to get us lost somewhere between Aalborg and the top of North Jutland. My partner was navigating, or so I thought, until I realised he had been confidently pointing at a map of southern Norway for the last forty minutes. We ended up down a farm track staring at some very unimpressed sheep, both of us too stubborn to admit we might need the sat nav. By the time we finally spotted the sign for Bratten Strand, I had worked myself into that particular state of travel delirium where everything becomes either hilarious or deeply tragic.

The cottage appeared at the end of a sandy lane, tucked behind wind-sculpted pines that looked like they had been combed sideways by decades of Baltic breeze. It was one of those proper Danish summer houses, painted that warm butter yellow with white trim, slightly weathered in the most photogenic way possible. I stumbled out of the car with numb legs and immediately tripped over a bicycle that the previous guests had left leaning against the fence. My partner found this enormously funny. I did too, twenty minutes later, once I had stopped feeling like a complete fool.

The key was in a little lockbox, which of course I could not open on the first three attempts. When it finally clicked, the door swung inward and that particular smell hit me. You know the one. Old wood, dried lavender someone had tucked in a cupboard years ago, salt air that had permeated everything, and just the faintest suggestion of the coffee someone brewed that morning. It smelled like every summer holiday I had ever loved and promptly forgotten about.

I dumped my bag in the hallway and made straight for the garden. The grass was longer than a manicured English lawn, full of clover and buttercups, sloping gently down towards a hedge of Rosa rugosa with their papery pink blooms. A wooden table sat under a canvas awning, slightly stained with what I chose to believe was red wine. Two deckchairs faced south, positioned with the precision of people who had spent actual time working out the optimal sun angle. I lowered myself into one and it creaked in protest. Perfect.

That first afternoon, I did absolutely nothing of any conceivable value. I unpacked my bag eventually, but only because I needed my book. I read three pages, fell asleep, woke up with a line of text imprinted on my cheek, and read the same three pages again. A bumblebee the size of a small aircraft investigated the table. Somewhere beyond the hedge, I could hear the distant shush of the sea. My partner made tea with a kettle that took approximately one geological age to boil, and we drank it lukewarm because neither of us could be bothered to wait.

I kept thinking I should plan something. A walk to the beach proper, perhaps, or a cycle to the little harbour at Strandby. There was a folder in the kitchen drawer full of local attractions, leaflets about the lighthouse at Skagen, brochures for fish restaurants. I opened it, glanced at a map, and felt an overwhelming peacefulness at the thought of going absolutely nowhere. The garden had different light every hour. Morning sun caught the dew on the spider webs between the chair legs. By midday the awning cast a stripe of shade I kept shifting my legs into, like a cat following a warm patch of floor.

On the second day I discovered the hammock. It had been hidden behind the shed, folded into itself like a forgotten promise. I spent an hour trying to hang it between two trees that were clearly the wrong distance apart, gave up, and lay it directly on the grass instead. This worked surprisingly well until a light rain started and I simply pulled it over my head like a cocoon. I could hear my partner laughing from the kitchen window. I did not care. I was a human sausage roll, and I was content.

The thing about doing very little is that it takes practice. I am out of shape for it, I think. My brain kept offering suggestions. Should we not be seeing things? Making memories? I have this terrible habit of treating holidays like projects, complete with objectives and deliverables. But there was something about that particular garden, those particular deckchairs, that slowly wore me down. The way the afternoon light turned everything golden and slow. The way time stopped being something to fill and became something to simply inhabit.

By the third day I had stopped checking my watch entirely. I read the same novel I had brought, properly this time, finishing it in the hammock during a spell of afternoon warmth. I watched the swallows darting overhead, their flight paths too quick to follow properly, just impressions of movement against the pale Danish sky. I learned which patch of grass stayed dry longest after rain. I found a spot behind the shed where wild strawberries grew, tiny and intense, and ate them straight from the plant without washing them, something my mother would have despaired of.

The mishap with the map on arrival became our running joke. Every time we considered venturing further than the garden gate, one of us would wave the imaginary Norway map and declare it far too risky. We never did make it to that lighthouse. The fish restaurant remained a brochure in the drawer. We walked to the beach once, I think, on the fourth day, but only because we had finished the milk and the little shop required passing it anyway. We stayed perhaps twenty minutes, just long enough to confirm that sand still gets everywhere and the water was still bracingly cold, then retreated to our awning and our lukewarm tea.

I have been home for two weeks now, and I keep thinking about that garden. Not the dramatic moments, because there were not any. Just the particular quality of stillness, the way doing nothing stopped feeling like waste and started feeling like nourishment. I am trying to carry it with me, this permission to be unproductive, to let a day pass without achievement. It is harder here, surrounded by the noise of ordinary life. But I have the deckchair imprint on my memory, and the taste of those unwashed strawberries, and the sound of a kettle taking forever to boil. It is enough, I think. It was more than enough.