I should have known the holiday was off to a classic start when I confidently reversed our hire car into what I thought was the driveway of our cottage in Kisserup, only to discover I'd parked in next door's vegetable patch. The owner, a splendidly unbothered Danish chap in wellies, simply waved and said something that sounded forgiving. I chose to believe it was forgiving, anyway.

The journey up from Copenhagen had been properly lovely, mind you. North Zealand does that thing where the landscape gets gradually more smug about how pretty it is, all rolling fields and glimpses of the Isefjord glittering away in the distance. My partner had done that annoying but correct thing of researching everything, while I'd been in charge of snacks and playlist curation. The snacks were excellent. The playlist, featuring three separate versions of "Summer of '69," was less so. The children had voted with their headphones.

Finding the actual property involved a minor comedy of following a sat nav that seemed to think we fancied a tour of every gravel track in Tuse Naes. But then there it was: a proper Danish cottage, all red wooden cladding and white trim, looking like it had been plucked from a tourism brochure and gently placed among the trees. The sort of place that makes you immediately want to light a fire and pretend you're in a crime drama, but the cosy kind where nobody actually dies.

The key was in one of those little lock boxes that always make me feel like I'm breaking into my own holiday, and the door opened with that satisfying weight that Scandinavian doors seem to have. Inside, it was all wooden floors and that particular brightness you get from houses that actually see the sun, unlike our Victorian terrace back home which considers "gloomy" a personality trait. The kitchen had one of those big farmhouse tables that practically demands board games and spilled juice, and the living area opened out towards the garden where, I noted with relief, there was a proper barbecue and some extremely weathered garden furniture that looked like it had seen decades of slightly burnt sausages.

My youngest immediately claimed the loft bedroom, which involved a ladder and therefore instant status. My teenager examined the WiFi with the sceptical expression of someone checking a horse's teeth, then nodded once, which counts as enthusiastic approval in their world. I unpacked the shopping we'd done in Holbaek, including far too much Danish cheese and something called "remoulade" that I was determined to understand before the week was out.

That first evening, we sat outside with blankets because we'd all failed to pack anything sensible, and watched the light do that extraordinary Scandinavian thing where it hangs around for hours being golden and smug. The children argued about who had to fetch more firewood. My partner produced wine. I thought about the vegetable patch incident and decided some things are better shared only with immediate family, and even then, possibly never.

By the time we turned in, the cottage had already settled into that particular rhythm of holiday accommodation: the creak of floorboards, the unfamiliar but not unpleasant smell of someone else's wooden beams, the distant sound of a neighbour's dog that had opinions about something. I lay there thinking about how we'd done absolutely nothing remarkable, really, except arrive, misidentify a driveway, and eat cheese in blankets. And yet there was already that particular feeling, the one that proper family holidays have, where the ordinary bits are somehow the ones you remember.

The next morning, I promised myself, we would explore properly. Walk the nearby trails. Maybe find that beach we'd read about. Almost certainly burn those sausages.