The SatNav had other ideas about how to reach Liseleje Strand, which is how I ended up on a farm track somewhere outside Helsingor, nose-to-nose with a tractor and a man called Henrik who looked like he'd been waiting his whole life for this moment.

"English?" he said, not unkindly, tapping my bonnet with a weathered finger. I admitted it with the shame of someone who had definitely just driven through his beet field. Henrik scratched his beard, leaned on his door frame, and proceeded to give me directions so elaborate they involved three generations of his family, a bakery that closed in 1987, and "the big rock that looks like a tired man." I never found the rock. I did find the holiday park twenty minutes later, somehow, which felt like a minor miracle given I'd been navigating by Henrik's memory of childhood cycling routes.

The woman at reception introduced herself as Birgitte and immediately asked whether I was "the beet field person." Word travels fast in North Zealand, apparently. She handed me my keys with a smile that suggested she'd stored this story for her husband's dinner entertainment, then explained the boiler in such exhaustive detail that I began to suspect she'd trained as an aircraft engineer. "You will ignore everything I say," she predicted, correctly, "then you will ring me at ten o'clock because you want a bath." I promised I wouldn't. I absolutely did, as it happened, though I waited until quarter past out of stubborn pride.

My cottage sat among pine trees with that particular Scandinavian stillness that makes you feel slightly rude for existing too loudly. I was unloading the car when my neighbour emerged, a chap called Freddy who wore sandals with socks and carried a fishing rod like an extension of his own arm. He'd lived at Liseleje Strand every summer since 1984, he told me, which meant he'd "seen things." The things, apparently, were mostly Germans attempting to barbecue in the rain and one memorable incident involving a Swedish family and a misplaced campfire. Freddy spoke in long, meandering paragraphs that always returned to the same point: the sea bass run better in September, and people nowadays don't understand patience.

"You're a walker?" he asked, looking at my boots with the suspicion usually reserved for tax inspectors. I confessed I was. Freddy nodded slowly, as if this explained my beet field situation, then directed me toward the beach path with the warning that "the Germans walk very fast, very determined, you understand, like they are being followed." I did understand, somehow, though I'm still not entirely sure what he meant.

The beach itself appeared through the pines like a postcard someone had left lying around: pale sand, that milky Baltic light, a few determined souls in windbreakers scanning the horizon. An elderly woman stood ankle-deep in the water, fully dressed in a floral housecoat, chatting to a man in a wetsuit who turned out to be her grandson. They invited me to inspect his catch, which consisted of one rather insulted-looking mackerel and a lot of enthusiastic commentary about "the old days" when the fish practically jumped into your arms. The grandson, whose name was Kristoffer, rolled his eyes with the practised exhaustion of someone who'd heard these stories approximately four thousand times. "Grandmother believes fish respected people more before smartphones," he said. She nodded firmly, as if this were established science.

I walked back as the light faded, passing Freddy who was now standing motionless in the shallows, rod poised, apparently communicating with something invisible beneath the surface. He didn't acknowledge me, deep in whatever communion exists between a man and his fishing spot. Birgitte was locking the reception as I passed; she raised an eyebrow in silent commentary on my inevitable boiler difficulties.

That first evening, I sat on my small wooden deck with a cup of tea that went cold too quickly, listening to the pines and distant sounds of other people's barbecues. Somewhere out there, Henrik was probably still chuckling about the English in the beet field. Kristoffer's grandmother was surely explaining fish psychology to someone else. Freddy remained in the water, patient as stone.

I'd arrived chaotic and slightly lost, which felt, by the end of that first day, like exactly the right preparation for understanding this particular stretch of Danish coast. The people here weren't performing hospitality; they were simply being themselves at you, generously, until you adjusted to their frequency. I was still adjusting, frankly. But I was already wondering what Birgitte would say when I inevitably rang about the boiler, and whether Freddy would ever actually catch anything, and if Kristoffer's grandmother might let me join her next paddle in my own inappropriate clothing.

Some holidays you plan. Others, apparently, you survive the journey and then let happen to you, one character at a time.