I have never been so grateful to see a gravel driveway in my life. After three hours of driving from Copenhagen Airport, during which our youngest was sick into a carrier bag somewhere near Roskilde and our sat-nav decided that "shortest route" meant "every single farm track in northern Zealand," we finally crunched to a halt outside the cottage at Munkerup Strand. I stepped out, stretched my legs, and immediately trod in what I desperately hoped was mud. It wasn't. The dog from next door had left a welcome gift right by the driver's door, and there I was, brand new white trainers ruined before I'd even seen the sea.

My wife found this hilarious, naturally. She was still laughing while fumbling with the key safe, which apparently required the dexterity of a safecracker and the patience of a saint. I hopped about on one foot, scraping my sole against the grass like a flamingo with hygiene issues, while the children asked repeatedly if there was a swimming pool. There isn't. The listing had been very clear about this. Children, however, are remarkably selective in their listening.

The cottage itself redeemed everything the moment we got inside. Proper Danish holiday home vibes: wood everywhere, that particular smell of pine and old beach holidays, windows that actually open properly unlike our flat in Croydon. The sitting room looked straight out through dunes to the Kattegat, that silvery stretch of water that somehow looks calmer than the sea has any right to be. I forgot about the dog mess. I forgot about the sick bag. I even forgot that I'd packed three pairs of shorts and no trousers despite checking the weather forecast seventeen times.

My wife opened the patio doors and the wind did that wonderful thing where it smells of salt and pine and something faintly fishy but in a good way, a proper seaside way. The children bolted straight down the garden path toward the beach, shoes already half-off, despite our protestations about dinner and unpacking. We let them go. Some things are more important than organisational efficiency.

I made tea with the funny little hob kettle while my wife investigated the bedrooms. Her voice carried that particular note of amused resignation that I've learned not to ignore. "Stairs are a bit steep," she called down. "And the smallest bedroom has a doorframe I just walked into." She's five foot four. I am not looking forward to my first visit to the bathroom in the night.

By the time I'd found the proper mugs, not the decorative ones that hold approximately three sips, the children had returned with pockets full of stones and a crab shell of dubious vintage. They wanted to keep it. Of course they did. We negotiated down to "photograph it and leave it for the next family," which satisfied nobody but avoided an evening of crab-related arguments.

Dinner was the classic first-night holiday shop: bread, cheese, some suspiciously pink Danish ham that turned out to be delicious, and tomatoes that actually tasted of something. We ate at the wooden table with the windows open, watching the light change over the water, while the children bickered gently about who had the better bedroom and whether tomorrow constituted a "beach day" or a "cottage day." The dog from next door wandered past again, looked me directly in the eye, and I swear it smirked.

I thought about my ruined trainers, sitting in a plastic bag by the door. I thought about the sat-nav, currently in the glovebox serving a well-deserved time-out. I thought about how we'd spent the previous month in meetings and school runs and the general administrative fog of ordinary life, and how none of it mattered here. The children were filthy already. The cottage had that particular comfortable chaos of a place that expects sand on the floor and doesn't mind if you eat biscuits in the sitting room. My wife poured wine into glasses that didn't match, and we didn't care.

Tomorrow we would explore properly, walk the coastal path toward Gilleleje perhaps, find the local bakery, work out which of the nearby beaches had the best rock pools. Tonight, though, we sat with the windows open and the unfamiliar sounds of Danish evening, the particular quiet of a place where the sea is always present even when you can't quite hear it. The children fell asleep in unfamiliar beds with unfamiliar duvets, and my wife and I stayed up too late talking about nothing much, which is sometimes exactly the right kind of conversation.

I went to bed slightly sunburned despite the overcast journey, slightly full of ham and cheese, and entirely certain that forgetting the trousers had been, in its own small way, a sort of blessing. You cannot be too prepared for a place like this. It works better if you arrive slightly rumpled, slightly ridiculous, ready to be surprised by simplicity.