I should have known the holiday proper had begun when I missed the turning for Sjaellands Odde by a good three miles, distracted by what I firmly maintain was the world's most picturesque tractor. There I was, humming along a narrow lane in Odsherred with the windows down and a false sense of navigational confidence, when the road simply ended at a farm gate with a sheep that looked personally offended by my presence.

The U-turn was undignified. The sheep remembers.

But here's the curious thing about getting properly lost in this corner of Denmark: you stumble upon places no brochure would think to mention. Retracing my route, I took what I believed to be a shortcut and found myself on a gravel track that wound through dense beech woodland, emerging suddenly at a tiny cove I'd never have discovered otherwise. The water was that particular Baltic grey-green, and an elderly man was swimming with a serenity I envied enormously from my position of fully-clothed bewilderment. I waved. He nodded. We understood each other perfectly.

The property itself, when I finally located it, sat tucked among low dunes with that understated Scandinavian confidence I always find slightly intimidating. Clean lines, enormous windows, and a deck that demanded I immediately sit down with a cup of tea and contemplate my life choices. The letting agent had mentioned a path to the beach; what she hadn't mentioned was that the path forked mysteriously, and the wrong fork led to a small pond where someone had arranged weathered stones into what I can only describe as a very Danish form of meditation circle. I spent twenty minutes there, convinced I was having a profound experience, before realising it was probably just a rather artistic drainage solution.

My first evening, determined to explore properly, I set off without my phone and promptly took every wrong turning available within a two-mile radius. This is how I found the abandoned orchard, its apple trees gnarled and heavy with fruit no one seemed to be harvesting. I filled my pockets like a child, then spent the walk back wondering what on earth one does with seventeen slightly wormy apples and no baking facilities to speak of. The answer, I discovered, was to leave them on the kitchen counter and feel vaguely agricultural every time I walked past.

The local shop, when I located it after another unintended detour, sold me excellent cheese and bread and told me about a swimming spot the tourists don't know. "Follow the path past the red house, then don't follow the path," the woman said, which I thought was either profound Danish philosophy or genuinely useful directions. It was both, as it turned out. The swimming spot was a rocky outcrop where the water deepened unexpectedly, and I spent a glorious hour there with only a heron for company, feeling smug about my accidental discovery.

There's something humbling about a landscape that rewards your incompetence. Every wrong turn in Odsherred seemed to deliver something the satnav would never have suggested: a field of late-summer wildflowers, a sudden view across the sound to the distant haze of the next peninsula, a bench placed with mathematical precision at exactly the point where your legs begin to protest.

By day three, I'd abandoned any pretence of purposeful walking. I set out each morning with a flask and no destination, letting the lanes and paths decide my itinerary. I found a tiny harbour where fishing boats rested at improbable angles, their owners mending nets with the patience of men who have never once considered checking their email. I found a cafe in what appeared to be someone's front room, where the coffee was strong and the cake was exceptional and the proprietor seemed faintly surprised to see me, though not unpleasantly so.

The mishap of that first wrong turning had become, by the end of the week, my entire methodology. I arrived flustered and sheep-adjacent; I left with pockets full of questionable apples and a newfound trust in the navigational potential of having no idea where you're going. Some holidays you plan meticulously. Others, like this one, you simply allow to happen, one wrong turn at a time.