I should have known the holiday was off to a classic start when I put the postcode into my sat nav and it directed me to a field full of very unimpressed-looking sheep. Three-point turn in front of an audience of livestock, brilliant. Turns out I'd punched in one digit wrong, which in rural North Zealand is apparently the difference between a charming cottage and becoming an accidental shepherd.

By the time I actually found Overby Lyng, I'd been down enough narrow lanes to feel like I was starring in a Danish mystery drama. The cottage sat there looking impossibly picturesque, all traditional timber framing and that warm, lived-in quality you can't fake. I half expected to find a film crew round the back.

My first proper human interaction came from next door, where a chap called Henrik was leaning on his fence with the practiced patience of someone who'd watched my sheep-related detour in its entirety. "You are the English," he announced, not as a question. He'd spotted the rental car, apparently. We had a ten-minute conversation about Brexit, fishing quotas, and his brother-in-law who once got food poisoning in Blackpool. I learned more about Danish herring politics than I ever thought necessary. Lovely bloke, absolutely no concept of personal space.

The woman who handed over the keys was called Mette, and she arrived on a bicycle that looked older than I was. She'd lived in the village her whole life, she told me, and proceeded to give me the full oral history of every building within shouting distance. The cottage itself had been in her family for generations. Her great-grandfather built the extension after arguing with his brother about something nobody could quite remember anymore. "Probably politics," she said, rolling her eyes. "Or a woman. Usually both." She made me promise to try the local bakery, then immediately warned me against the cinnamon rolls on Wednesdays because that's when the baker's nephew makes them and he's "too artistic for his own good."

I popped to that bakery the next morning, naturally. Behind the counter was a stern-looking woman who turned out to be the baker's wife, Birgit. She looked me up and down like she was calculating whether I was worthy of Wednesday's experimental cinnamon rolls. I played it safe with a Friday loaf. "Good choice," she said, which felt like receiving a knighthood. Then she asked if I was the one who'd been talking to Henrik. News travels faster than WiFi round here.

The absolute highlight, though, was an elderly gentleman I met while trying to work out the cottage's wood-burning stove. His name was Erik, he appeared from absolutely nowhere in the garden, and he used to install heating systems in Copenhagen before retiring to "watch tourists struggle with Danish engineering." He talked me through the stove with the solemnity of a priest performing communion, pausing occasionally to tell me I was doing it wrong. By the end, we were sharing coffee from his flask and he'd invited me to his grandson's birthday party, which I politely declined on the grounds that I didn't want to become someone's weird English anecdote.

Sitting there that evening, stove finally crackling away, I found myself thinking about how I'd arrived expecting solitude and scenery. Instead, I'd collected a small cast of characters who'd somehow made a stranger feel briefly like a neighbour. There's something rather wonderful about places where people still have time to lean on fences, to tell you about their great-grandfather's grudges, to share a flask with someone who can't operate basic household appliances.

The sheep, I should add, remained entirely unimpressed throughout.