I should have known the holiday was going to be characterful when I put the postcode into my sat nav and it directed me to a field containing one angry goose and a wheelbarrow. Three-point turn of shame, a bit of creative language, and half an hour later I finally found the actual Vellerup Strand, tucked along the coast of North Zealand like a well-kept secret.

The cottage itself was one of those classic Danish summer houses, all weathered wood and big windows looking out towards the Kattegat. I was still laughing at myself when I stepped onto the little wooden deck, and that is precisely when Bent appeared. He was seventy if he was a day, wearing a jumper that had seen better decades, and he was standing in the neighbouring garden holding a pair of hedge clippers like a conductor's baton.

"You are the English," he announced, which was not a question. "I watched you with the goose. Very funny."

I admitted it was not my finest navigational moment. Bent nodded sagely and informed me that the goose belonged to no one, answered to no one, and had personally chased him into his own shed last Tuesday. We were bonding already.

He introduced me to his wife, Grethe, who emerged with coffee and a level of directness I found immediately refreshing. She wanted to know if I was single, what I did for money, and whether I understood Danish television. I failed on at least two counts. She patted my arm and said I would do, which felt like passing some kind of informal citizenship test.

The next morning I walked down to the little harbour, more a cluster of boats and sheds than anything grand, and found a man called Flemming sitting on an upturned bucket mending nets. He did not look up when I approached, simply said, "You are staying in the blue house. You drove into the field yesterday." News travels fast in Vellerup Strand, apparently by methods more reliable than any mobile signal I managed to find.

Flemming told me about fishing, about the water, about how the Swedes were visible on clear days and best ignored. He spoke in long, meandering paragraphs that required no response, which suited me perfectly. When I finally mentioned I should probably buy some food, he produced a fillet of plaice from a cool box with the casual generosity of someone who had done this a hundred times before. "You will ruin it," he said, with what I chose to interpret as affectionate pessimism.

That evening I attempted to cook this plaice with the limited enthusiasm of someone who had packed optimistically for self-catering. The smoke alarm had opinions. So did Grethe, who appeared at my kitchen window without warning and spent twenty minutes demonstrating the correct technique, mostly through the medium of expressive hand gestures and the occasional Danish exclamation I suspected was not entirely complimentary.

By the third day I had accumulated what felt like an accidental family. There was young Rasmus, who delivered bread on a bicycle older than he was and insisted on practising his English with me, which meant conversations about football teams I had never heard of. There was Lene at the tiny village shop, who remembered everyone's preferences and mine within a single visit, and who told me my Danish pronunciation was "brave," a word I have learned to recognise in any language.

What struck me most was how these interactions accumulated without any formal arrangement. No organised activities, no tourist programmes, just people being interested in a slightly bumbling visitor with a talent for wrong turns. I found myself slowing down to match their rhythms, lingering over coffee I had not asked for, accepting advice I had not sought.

On my final morning Bent presented me with a hand-drawn map to the station, complete with a warning about the goose's favourite ambush spots. Grethe packed me a sandwich. Flemming nodded from his bucket, and even Rasmus managed a solemn handshake that nearly undid me entirely.

I left Vellerup Strand with sand in my shoes, slightly better at fish cookery, and the peculiar warmth of having been briefly adopted by strangers who asked for nothing except perhaps the occasional bit of entertainment at my expense. Some holidays give you photographs. This one gave me characters I suspect I will remember far longer, and the gentle realisation that being slightly lost, occasionally, is not such a terrible way to find your way into a place.