I have never been particularly good at reading maps, which is a polite way of saying I am dreadful at them. So when my partner handed me the directions to our Kelstrup cottage in South Jutland and told me to navigate, I should have recognised the foreshadowing for what it was. Three hours out of Billund Airport, we found ourselves down a farm track staring at a very friendly horse who, I am fairly certain, was judging my life choices. The sat nav had given up on us somewhere near Haderslev, and my printed instructions had turned into a soggy lump after a coffee incident at a petrol station. We were, in the technical sense, lost in Denmark.

The thing about South Jutland, though, is that being lost there is not particularly frightening. The landscape rolls along in the most undemanding way, all green fields and tidy hedgerows and the occasional red-roofed farmhouse sitting there like it has been waiting centuries for someone to paint it. We wound down the windows. The air smelled of cut grass and something else, something I eventually identified as the sea, though it was still miles away. We turned around, found a proper road, and twenty minutes later pulled up to a wooden gate with a little sign that matched the booking confirmation I had screen-shotted on my phone three months prior.

The cottage sat back from a quiet lane, modest and white-painted with a steep roof that looked ready for serious winter weather. My first thought was that it looked sensible. My second thought, once I had wrestled the key from the lockbox with frozen fingers, was that sensible could also be beautiful. The door opened directly into a living area with windows on two sides, and afternoon light was pouring in across a worn wooden floor. I stood there with my suitcase still in the car and just let it hit me. The quiet, mostly. After months of London noise, the quiet felt almost physical, like stepping into a different medium.

My partner brought in the bags while I wandered. The kitchen was small and plainly equipped, the kind of place that expects you to cook simply and eat well. There was a wood-burning stove in the corner, unlit but clearly ready for duty. Upstairs, two bedrooms with sloped ceilings and beds that creaked reassuringly when I sat to test them. But it was the garden that stopped me properly. French doors led out to a patch of lawn bordered by mature trees, with a wooden table and chairs positioned in a spot that must have been calculated by someone who understood sunlight the way I understand absolutely nothing. A hammock hung between two birch trees. I do not think I had ever wanted to lie in anything so badly in my entire life.

That first evening, we did almost nothing. We walked to the village shop, which was closing in ten minutes, and bought bread, cheese, a bottle of red wine, and some tomatoes that actually smelled of tomatoes. We ate at that garden table as the light went soft and golden, and I kept finding myself just staring at the trees moving slightly in the breeze. There was no urge to plan, no sense that we should be heading somewhere more interesting. The interesting thing was here, already, in the not-doing.

I have spent so many holidays trying to maximise experiences, ticking boxes, coming home exhausted. Sitting in that garden with wine warming slightly in my hand, I felt the first loosening of something I had not realised I was holding so tightly. The horse had been right to judge me. I had been going about things all wrong.