The trouble with a spring trip to North Zealand, I have decided, is that you pack for one thing and get quite another. We left Copenhagen in sunshine, me smug in sunglasses with the roof down, and by the time we reached Udsholt Strand the sky had turned the colour of old porridge and I was hunting through the boot for a coat I had optimistically left behind.

The mishap came at the handover. The key safe code worked fine, but I yanked the door open with theatrical confidence and walked straight into a utility cupboard. The actual entrance was the next door along, which I discovered only after setting off a small avalanche of wellington boots and a mop bucket that clattered down like a domestic drum solo. My partner, who had been photographing a particularly handsome horse chestnut tree, returned to find me restacking cleaning supplies with the frantic energy of a burglar putting a house back together.

Udsholt Strand itself, once I found the proper way in, had that particular hush that coastal places keep for the off-season. The holiday home sat among pines with the sea just visible through gaps in the trees, grey and restless under the low sky. The air carried salt and something greener, the damp freshness of everything beginning to wake up after winter. You could smell the season turning, that moment when the cold has not quite released its grip but the world insists on pushing forward anyway.

The heating clicked on as we entered, and the warmth after the raw wind outside felt almost decadent. I stood at the window with a cup of tea that I needed more than wanted, watching the light fail early as it does in April, the darkness gathering slowly rather than falling. The pines moved in the wind with a sound like distant water, which confused me until I walked down to the beach proper and realised the actual sea was much quieter, small waves collapsing tiredly on shingle.

Spring here is not pretty, not yet. The dunes held last year's browned marram grass, and the path down to the shore was muddy in that particular way where each step threatens to become a slide. I picked my way down with the concentration of a much older man, which I suppose I am becoming, and found the beach empty except for gulls and the odd piece of driftwood worn smooth. The cold found its way through my inadequate jacket immediately, but I stayed long enough to feel properly chastened, to let the season make its point about preparedness and humility.

Back at the house, the light from the windows made a small yellow claim against the gathering dark. We cooked simply, something with potatoes and the excellent Danish butter that tastes of something proper, and ate with the satisfaction of people who have been properly outside. The wind picked up after dark and I lay listening to it move through the pines, thinking how different this place would be in summer, crowded and bright, how the same rooms would feel smaller with more people in them, how the sea would be for swimming rather than regarding with respectful distance.

There is something about the transitional season, the not-quite, that suits me better than I expected. The holiday home felt borrowed rather than rented, as if we were keeping it warm for the proper holidaymakers to come. I found I did not mind this. The low sky and the cold walks and the early nights were not shortcomings to endure but the whole point, the particular character of being here when the year is still deciding what it wants to be. I had come expecting to take from the place, and instead found myself fitting around it, adjusting to its mood and weather, becoming temporary in a way that felt honest.

The boots I had dislodged from the cupboard stayed by the door, useful after all. I wore them the next morning for another walk, another negotiation with mud and wind, and felt briefly like someone who belonged here, or at least like someone who knew enough to dress for where he actually was rather than where he had hoped to be.