The trouble with Hornbaek Strand began, as these things always seem to, with my unshakable confidence in satellite navigation. I'd been driving from Copenhagen Airport for what felt like a pleasant enough hour, humming along to Danish radio I couldn't understand, when my phone cheerfully announced I'd arrived. I was in a supermarket car park. A very nice supermarket car park, admittedly, with excellent bicycle parking, but not quite the seaside idyll promised by the photographs.

I found the actual place twenty minutes later, after a humbling conversation with a man walking what I initially thought was a very large dog but turned out to be two medium dogs standing very close together. Bent, I later learned his name was, though whether that was short for something or simply his parents' sense of humour, I never established. He spoke English with that effortless Scandinavian fluency that makes you feel slightly inadequate about your own linguistic achievements, and directed me with the patience of someone who'd clearly done this many times before.

"Your house is the one with the red kayak," he said, then paused. "Or possibly blue. The Jorgensens' grandson painted it last summer. He was going through a phase."

The house, when I finally located it, did indeed have a kayak of uncertain colour leaning against the decking. More striking was the woman sitting on the neighbouring veranda, watching my increasingly creative attempts at reverse parking with the undisguised interest of someone who'd forgotten to charge her television remote. This was Inge, who introduced herself by shouting "You're blocking my sun!" followed immediately by "Only joking, you're blocking nothing, the sun's been gone since Tuesday."

I learned more about local weather patterns in those first ten minutes than I have in decades of British small talk. Inge had lived in her cottage since 1987, which she considered "practically yesterday" by Hornbaek standards. Her husband, she explained, was currently "off being competitive about herring" at some fishing gathering near the harbour. "He'll come back smelling of fish and victory, or possibly just fish," she said, with the resigned fondness of long practice.

The key handover happened courtesy of a man called Flemming who arrived on a bicycle that appeared older than some of the surrounding pine trees. He was the property manager, though he introduced himself as "the chap who fixes things and occasionally remembers to bring keys." He'd forgotten the proper key this time, it transpired, but had brought a spare from 2019 that still worked "unless they've changed the locks, which they might have done, come to think of it." They hadn't.

Flemming stayed for what I initially assumed would be a brief orientation but stretched into nearly an hour of local intelligence. The best bakery, he explained, was run by a woman who'd trained in France and returned "slightly too fancy for her own good, but excellent croissants." The swimming was "bracing, which is Danish for potentially medically inadvisable." The local shopkeeper, he warned, would attempt to sell me something called "spegepolse" and I should accept this as a test of character.

By the time he left, I'd been invited to Inge's veranda for something she called "afternoon wine" despite the clock showing half past eleven, and had promised to look in on a cat belonging to someone called Margrethe who was visiting her sister in Odense. I still hadn't properly unpacked. I still hadn't located the kettle, which would become urgent approximately four hours later when the afternoon wine wore off.

Sitting on that slightly weathered decking, listening to Inge explain why the previous summer's tourist had been "the one who tried to barbecue mussels," I felt that particular lightness that comes from realising your carefully planned solitude has been thoroughly, delightfully interrupted. I'd come to Hornbaek Strand for quiet and pine-scented air, and found instead a village that seemed to operate on the cheerful assumption that strangers were simply friends who hadn't yet been properly introduced.

The kayak, I eventually confirmed, was neither red nor blue but something in between that changed depending on the light. Bent's dogs, I spotted later from my kitchen window, had separated and were now engaged in what appeared to be a complex negotiation with a seagull. Somewhere in the distance, Flemming's bicycle bell rang out, presumably heralding another key delivery to another confused traveller.

I poured myself a cup of tea made with water boiled in a saucepan, the kettle having vanished into some holiday-home mystery, and decided that arriving badly had perhaps been the best possible start.