I have never been brilliant at following sat nav instructions, and my trip to Bork Havn proved it in spectacular fashion. Somewhere past Ringkobing I managed to convince myself that a gravel track marked "Private" looked distinctly official. Twenty minutes of rattling through what I can only describe as aggressively flat farmland, with my partner giving me that particular look, and we arrived at a locked gate facing a very confused herd of cattle. The actual turn had been three miles back. Of course it had.

We eventually found the proper road, and I will admit there was some relief when the little cluster of holiday homes appeared beside the harbour. Bork Havn itself is not what you would call bustling. This is entirely the point. The cottage sat among similar low wooden buildings, all weathered to that soft silver-grey you only get from proper North Sea winters. Ours had a small garden with a patch of grass, a few hardy shrubs, and a wooden bench positioned with clear intent for doing absolutely nothing.

The first thing I did after dumping the bags was test that bench. It passed with flying colours. The garden was not manicured or fancy, just a simple enclosed space where the wind off the fjord made the grass move in slow waves. I sat there with a cup of tea that went lukewarm because I forgot to drink it, watching a neighbour potter about with a hose in a way that suggested he had no particular schedule either. Everyone moves slower here. It is catching.

Inside, the cottage had that particular Danish holiday home practicality. Everything worked without being new. The kitchen had proper mugs, not those tiny espresso things. The living room had books left by previous visitors, which I love. I spent a good half hour browsing titles while my partner unpacked, making authoritative noises about which paperbacks looked promising. I started three different ones that first afternoon, finishing none of them, which felt entirely appropriate.

The real discovery was the garden hammock. It had seen better days, slightly faded and with a small tear that I strategically avoided. I lay there with one of those abandoned books, reading the same paragraph approximately six times because the sky kept distracting me. West Jutland light is different somehow, clearer, making the clouds look more deliberate. A gull wheeled overhead making its complaining cry and I found myself oddly grateful for the interruption.

We did walk down to the harbour, naturally. Small boats sat at their moorings, a few fishermen mending things without urgency. The shop nearby had decent bread and not much else, which suited us perfectly. We bought provisions for laziness: cheese, some decent Danish beer, tomatoes that actually tasted of something.

That first evening we cooked simply and ate in the garden as the light stretched out past nine. I had brought running shoes with optimistic intentions. They stayed by the door, and I felt not one jot of guilt. The whole point of Bork Havn, I realised, was surrendering to the rhythm of very little. No monuments to tick off, no scenic drives essential to your wellbeing. Just the garden, the changing sky, the slow pleasure of a book you might finish or might not.

I thought about that wrong turn with the cattle as I sat there, beer in hand. Sometimes getting slightly lost is exactly what reminds you to stop trying so hard to arrive anywhere at all.