I have never been so grateful to see a set of wind turbines in all my life. After six hours of driving from Esbjerg, a wrong turn somewhere near Hjorring, and one spectacularly ill-judged attempt to overtake a tractor on a single-track road, the towering white blades of Skallerup Klit finally appeared on the horizon like enormous sentinels welcoming me to the edge of Denmark. I had done it. I had found North Jutland. Mostly by accident, admittedly, but still.

The mishap came during that final stretch. Relying on phone signal that was, charitably, intermittent, I had convinced myself the holiday home was down a sandy track marked only by a weather-beaten post box. It was not. That track led to a very nice man's private summerhouse, where his enormous dog expressed its feelings about my arrival with considerable volume. I reversed for nearly half a mile, sweating profusely, windows up, pretending this was all completely normal. The actual entrance to Skallerup Klit was two hundred metres further on, clearly signposted, impossible to miss if one is not an idiot. I am sometimes an idiot.

But then I stepped out of the car, and everything slowed down. The cottage sat there in its neat wooden cladding, weathered to that soft silver-grey you only get from proper North Sea exposure. A small garden surrounded it, wildish in the way that suggests thoughtful neglect rather than actual abandonment. Tufts of marram grass nodded about. A wooden bench faced west, presumably for sunset-watching with a cup of something. I immediately decided this bench and I were going to become very close friends.

Inside smelled of pine and old books and that particular clean-damp you get in coastal properties. The living area had enormous windows, floor to ceiling practically, framing nothing but sky and the distant dunes. I dumped my bags with the theatrical exhaustion of someone who has done almost nothing physical for six hours, made tea in a kitchen that was reassuringly basic, and collapsed onto the sofa with a paperback I had been carrying unread for three months.

That was Monday. By Thursday I had not moved more than five hundred metres from the property, and I could not have been happier about it.

The garden became my universe. Morning coffee on that bench, watching the light change over the heathland. Midday sandwiches at the small wooden table near the back door, where the windbreak of hardy shrubs created a pocket of surprising stillness. Afternoon reading in the hammock strung between two wind-stunted trees, the book eventually drooping in my hands as I dozed to the sound of nothing much at all. The occasional distant bark of a dog. The rhythmic hush of wind through grass. Once, a curlew calling somewhere out over the dunes, a sound so mournful and lovely it stopped me mid-page.

I brought running shoes. They stayed in my bag, accusatory but ignored. I had vaguely planned to visit Lokken, perhaps walk the beach to its colourful bathing huts. Maybe drive to see the Rubjerg Knude lighthouse, that famous one half-buried in sand. These plans seemed increasingly absurd as the days passed. Why would I drive somewhere to look at something when I could sit here and look at clouds? The clouds were excellent. Big Scandinavian clouds, full of weather and drama, moving fast enough to be interesting but slow enough not to demand attention.

There was a moment, I think Wednesday afternoon, when I realised I had been staring at the same paragraph for twenty minutes without reading it. Not because I was distracted, but because I had simply stopped needing to do anything with my eyes. The garden had gone golden in late light. A bee worked methodically through the clover near my feet. Somewhere a door banged in the wind, then banged again. I thought about all the holidays where I had rushed about, checking sights off lists, returning home exhausted. I thought about how I had always considered that doing something. And how perhaps it was actually doing nothing at all, in the most exhausting way possible.

Here, in this small wooden house at the edge of Denmark, I was finally doing nothing properly. No achievements. No stories for dinner parties, except perhaps the one about the dog and the wrong track. Just the garden, the bench, the hammock, the sky. The wind turbines turning slowly on the horizon, generating electricity for people who were busy being productive somewhere. I waved at them occasionally, feeling solidarity with their patient turning.

On my last morning I packed with the reluctance of someone leaving a place that has unexpectedly become necessary. The bench got a final sit. The hammock got a final swing. I drove away slowly, too slowly probably, another tractor accumulating behind me. This time I let it pass at the first opportunity. I was in no hurry. I am still, in some sense, sitting in that garden. I suspect I will be for quite some time.