I have never been brilliant with directions, so the fact that I made it to Hostrup Strand at all felt like something of a personal triumph. The drive up through North Jutland had been mostly straightforward, all flat fields and big skies, until I hit the final stretch of country lanes and promptly missed the turning twice. The first time I ended up at a farmyard where a very large dog gave me a look of profound disappointment. The second time I found myself in someone's gravel driveway, executing a seventeen-point turn while an elderly man watched from his window with what I can only describe as amused pity.

By the time I spotted the actual holiday home, tucked among the dunes with the North Sea somewhere beyond, I was forty minutes late, slightly sweaty, and in desperate need of a cup of tea. I grabbed my suitcase, my carrier bags of provisions, and what I thought were my house keys. They were not my house keys. They were, in fact, the keys to my flat in Manchester, which was roughly six hundred miles away and entirely unhelpful. I stood there in the gravel, patting down every pocket like a character in a farce, until I remembered the key safe code in my phone. My phone, naturally, was at four percent battery.

I am thirty-four years old. I have a mortgage and a pension. I should be better at this.

The key safe opened with a satisfying clunk, and I stepped inside the house with that particular mixture of relief and trepidation that comes with self-catering accommodation. You never quite know what you are going to get. But the place was immediately, genuinely lovely - all pale wood and big windows, with that particular Scandinavian brightness that makes you feel instantly more wholesome than you actually are. The living area opened onto a deck, and beyond that I could see the proper duneland, all marram grass and shifting sand, with the grey-blue sea just visible. I stood there with my carrier bags still in my hands, suddenly aware that I had been holding my breath slightly.

The mishaps were not quite finished, of course. I had bought what I thought was a sensible amount of food for a week, but in my flustered state at the supermarket in Hirtshals I had somehow acquired three different types of mustard, no butter, and a quantity of pickled herring that now seemed ambitious. I put the kettle on, discovered the hob worked differently to any hob I had ever encountered, and spent several minutes pressing buttons with increasing desperation before it finally sparked into life. The tea, when it came, tasted like absolute victory.

I took my mug out onto the deck, finally still, finally arrived. The air had that particular North Jutland quality, clean and slightly salty, with a breeze that was fresher than I had expected even in late summer. A pair of gulls argued somewhere overhead. The dunes moved gently in the wind, and I could hear the sea properly now, that rhythmic hush and withdrawal that makes everything else feel less urgent.

I thought about my keys, still useless in my pocket. About the dog, the elderly man, the seventeen-point turn. About how I would need to drive back to Hirtshals tomorrow for butter and probably some actual vegetables. And I laughed, properly, for the first time that day, because there is something about arriving somewhere slightly chaotic that makes the eventual stillness feel earned. The house was warm, the tea was hot, and the North Sea was right there, doing what it has done for thousands of years, entirely indifferent to my mustard situation.

I stayed on that deck until my tea went cold, watching the light change over the water, feeling the particular peace of being somewhere new with a whole week ahead and absolutely no plan except to be slightly better at relaxing than I am at navigation.