The SatNav had other ideas about how to reach Odsherred. "Turn left," it commanded, as we approached what was clearly a ploughed field. My other half, ever the optimist, obliged. Ten minutes later we were staring at a very confused horse and a sign that loosely translated as "private, go away." I had not yet mastered Danish beyond "tak" and "ol," so my attempts to ask the horse for directions fell rather flat.

We eventually found Sj.Odde by following a man on a bicycle who was towing what appeared to be half a greenhouse. He led us through a lane of wild roses and suddenly there it was, perched on its little promontory like something from a children's book. Red wooden walls, white trim, the works. The greenhouse man gave us a thumbs up and cycled on, presumably to attach the remaining glass to something else.

The key was where the owner said it would be, under a ceramic frog that looked distinctly judgmental. I dropped it twice. The door opened with a satisfying creak and the smell of pine and salt hit immediately. Proper Danish summerhouse smell, that. My first thought was that someone had made a terrible error and given us a place far too nice for the price. My second thought was that I should probably stop saying this out loud in case they heard me.

We dumped our bags and I immediately went to test the water, because that is what you do when you see the Kattegat glinting at you through the trees. The pebbles were unforgiving. I yelped. A woman two gardens down, who was hanging laundry with the precision of a naval operation, shouted something that sounded encouraging. I waved back, hopping on one foot, which she seemed to find entirely normal.

Her name, we learned later, was Birgit. She appeared at our fence that evening with a bowl of strawberries and a dog the size of a small bear. The dog was called Flemming. "He is lazy," she announced, as Flemming immediately lay down in our doorway and refused to move. Birgit had lived in the next house for forty summers. She knew the water temperature by looking at the reeds. She knew which boats belonged to whom. She had opinions about our parking, which she shared freely and, I suspect, accurately.

The following morning I met Bent at the little harbour, which sits perhaps ten minutes' walk along the shore path. He was mending nets with fingers that moved independently of his attention, which was fixed entirely on telling me about the plaice. The plaice, apparently, were having opinions this year. Not good opinions. He spoke Danish slowly for my benefit, then switched to English when I mangled my response, then back to Danish when I got cocky. This continued for twenty minutes. I understood perhaps forty percent and would not trade those minutes for anything.

His wife Inge brought coffee in a thermos that had seen better decades. She asked if I was "one of the internet people." I admitted this was technically true. She nodded as if this explained my shoes, which were still damp from my earlier wading attempt.

By day three I had acquired a routine of incompetence. I would walk to the harbour, fail to understand something about fish, walk back via the little shop in Havnebyen where a man called Per would sell me bread and correct my pronunciation of "rugbrod." He did this gently, with the patience of someone who had watched many tourists attempt Danish and would watch many more. I never got it right. He never stopped trying.

The woman in the house beyond Birgit, whose name I never properly caught but who answered to a whistle, began leaving rhubarb on our gatepost. No note. Just rhubarb. I made a crumble of questionable structural integrity and took her some. She accepted it with the solemnity of a state occasion and immediately gave me a jar of pickled herring in return. This is how diplomacy works in Odsherred, I gather. I ate the herring. I am still not certain I ate it correctly.

On our final evening, Birgit produced schnapps. Bent appeared from somewhere, though I had not seen him walk up. Per closed the shop early, which he apparently never did, and brought more bread. We sat on the little terrace as the light went long and pink over the water, and I understood perhaps a quarter of the conversation and laughed at all of it anyway. Flemming the dog moved between us expecting tribute and receiving it.

I had arrived thinking I would remember the house, the view, that first mishap with the SatNav. I left remembering the people who had watched me arrive, who had seen me yelp on the stones and drop the key and fail at Danish and still decided I was worth strawberries and corrections and rhubarb and schnapps. The Sj.Odde was lovely, properly lovely, with its red walls and its pine smell and its windows that framed the water like a painting. But it was the locals who made it something I will go back to, SatNav or no SatNav, probably getting lost again on purpose this time, just to see who finds me.