The sat nav had other ideas about how to reach our Vejby cottage, which is how I found myself wedged between a hedgerow and a very judgmental-looking sheep somewhere near Helsinge, three-point-turning in a rental car the size of a small barge. My partner sat in silent martyrdom, gripping the door handle as if preparing to bail. "Scenic route," I announced, with the desperate cheerfulness of a man who has just added twenty minutes to a journey already stretched by a delayed ferry from Puttgarden.

We arrived at the cottage as the afternoon light was doing that low, golden thing that makes North Zealand look like someone has applied an Instagram filter to reality. The Vejby place sat tucked among trees, all red wood and sensible Danish understatement, with a deck that practically begged for a cup of tea and some smug contemplation. I bounded out of the car, ready to embrace the great outdoors, and promptly walked into a low branch that the previous tenant had apparently failed to prune as a warning to the overconfident.

The cottage itself was spotless in that particular Scandinavian way that makes you feel slightly ashamed of your own domestic standards. We dumped our bags, pulled on our walking boots with the enthusiasm of people who had read too many "active holiday" brochures, and set off for what I had ambitiously termed "a gentle recce" of the local paths.

The Vejby area, I had researched, sits near enough to Tisvildeleje and the coast, but we were determined to explore the immediate network of trails first. The woods around here are proper Nordic fairy-tale territory, all pine and beech with sudden clearings where the light drops through in columns. We found a marked path heading roughly north and committed to it with the misplaced confidence of people whose weather app had shown a reassuring sun icon some hours earlier.

British weather, I should explain, has ruined me. Forty years of drizzle and dramatic reversals have left me simultaneously pessimistic and unprepared. I had packed a waterproof, naturally, but had left it in the car in a fit of sunny optimism. The Danish sky, which had been performing admirably, now began to assemble clouds with the speed of a committee reaching a negative decision.

The first drops arrived as we reached a small lake, one of those dark, still bodies of water that feature heavily in Scandinavian crime dramas. "Lovely," I said, as the rain advanced from suggestion to statement. We turned back, already calculating distances, and the heavens responded with what I can only describe as commitment to the bit.

Within minutes we were walking through a vertical river. The path, so charmingly dappled earlier, became a stream. My "breathable" walking trousers proved breathable in both directions. We squelched past a Danish couple in proper kit, who nodded with the polite neutrality of people witnessing a natural disaster they had no intention of preventing.

By the time we stumbled back to the cottage, I was performing a sort of full-body shiver that made speech difficult. My partner, who had sensibly worn a waterproof and was merely damp, opened the door with the expression of someone who had predicted this exact sequence of events. The heating went on, the kettle went on, and I stood in the shower until the hot water threatened to run out, reflecting on the gap between holiday ambition and holiday reality.

The rain drummed against the windows all evening. We ate whatever we had brought, drank wine, and watched the woods disappear into grey. I felt the particular foolishness of someone who had confused reading about nature with understanding it.

The morning brought clearing skies and a certain stubbornness on my part. We walked again, this time with every waterproof item we possessed, along a coastal path towards Tisvildeleje. The beach there, when we reached it, was magnificent in its bleakness, the Kattegat stretching grey-green to Sweden. I stood with my collar up, feeling properly alive in that way that only follows mild suffering, and decided that this was exactly what we had come for.