I have never been so relieved to see a gravel driveway in all my life. Three hours of driving from Copenhagen, two wrong turns past fields that all looked identical, and one spectacular argument with a sat nav that insisted "Honsinge Lyng" was somehow located in the middle of a pig farm. It was not. The pig farm, I later learned, was actually three miles further on. I had stopped to ask directions from a very patient man who spoke approximately six words of English and communicated mostly through pointing at clouds.

The actual arrival was less dignified than I had imagined. I had packed with the optimistic delusion that I would be the sort of person who needed three different types of footwear for a cottage holiday. Wellies. Trainers. Something called "walking sandals" that I bought in a panic at the airport. All of this tumbled out of the boot when I opened it, because I had forgotten to secure the suitcase properly. A bra landed on a lavender bush. I left it there for a full minute while I pretended to check my phone, as if this were completely normal behaviour in rural Denmark.

The cottage itself sat among low hedges and that particular Scandinavian grass that looks almost too green to be real. The sort of green that makes you suspicious, like it has been agreed upon in a meeting. I stood there with my keys in one hand and a rogue sock in the other, feeling the particular shame of the overtired traveller who has made everything more complicated than it needed to be.

Inside, the place smelled of pine and something else I could not identify. Clean, but not aggressively so. The kind of smell that suggests someone has recently opened windows on a good day and then sensibly left well alone. I found the kitchen first, then the sitting room with its wood-burning stove and windows that looked directly into garden. Not a garden that demanded anything. No elaborate flower beds or intimidating topiary. Just grass, a few fruit trees, and a wooden table that had clearly been left outside through enough winters to earn its position.

I had brought three books with the intention of "getting through them." This phrase now seems absurd to me. Getting through books, as if they were dental appointments. I started none of them that first afternoon. I sat on the wooden table, which wobbled slightly, and watched a blackbird work through the grass with the focused intensity of someone who actually knows what they are doing with their day. I had no such focus. I had a cup of tea that had gone lukewarm because I kept forgetting to drink it.

The garden did not care about my forgetfulness. That was the thing I noticed slowly, then all at once. The fruit trees were not waiting for me to appreciate them correctly. The grass would continue its slow business regardless of whether I walked on it or not. There was a hammock strung between two trees that I had not noticed at first, and I spent a solid twenty minutes just looking at it without deciding whether to use it. The decision seemed too significant somehow.

By evening I had moved approximately four metres from the table to a deck chair that creaked when I sat down. I watched the light change over the hedge, which sounds like something a pretentious person would write in a holiday diary, but I did it anyway and I refuse to apologise. The sat nav had not prepared me for this. The walking sandals certainly had not. I had come prepared for activity and found instead the radical permission to simply stop.

I fell asleep in the deck chair with my lukewarm tea still in my hand. Woke up with a crick in my neck and the profound satisfaction of having achieved absolutely nothing.