We’d barely made it off the A149 when the satnav decided to send us down a single-track lane that promptly narrowed into someone’s driveway. By the time I’d executed a seventeen-point turn with the wing mirror folded in like a sulking bat, we were both laughing too hard to mind the extra ten minutes it took to reach Filigree Manor And Mews. The cottage sat just back from the shingle at Old Hunstanton, its flint walls glowing in the late-afternoon light and the smell of salt already sneaking through the open car window.

First job, naturally, was supper. We’d stopped at the little Co-op in Hunstanton on the way and come away with a couple of Cromer crabs, a crusty loaf, and a tub of cockles that the woman behind the till swore were “proper fresh.” Back at the cottage I spread everything across the scrubbed pine table while my partner poured two generous glasses of the local ale we’d picked up at the convenience shop. The kitchen was small but perfectly arranged; within minutes the smell of butter melting in the cast-iron pan filled the whole ground floor.

Next morning we wandered the short distance into Hunstanton itself for the Saturday market. Stalls lined the green, heavy with dressed crabs, samphire still damp from the tide, and jars of pickled herring. We bought a couple of warm sausage rolls from the butcher’s van and ate them on a bench overlooking the Wash, flakes of pastry scattering onto the pebbles like edible confetti. By midday we were ready for something more substantial, so we ducked into The Wash and Tope for fish and chips. The portions were generous enough that we ended up wrapping half in paper to take back for later, which seemed terribly decadent until we realised we’d finished the leftovers cold, straight from the fridge, before the kettle had even boiled.

Our first attempt at cooking in the cottage was less triumphant. I’d spotted some local mussels at the market and decided to steam them in cider with a handful of thyme from the pot by the back door. Everything went swimmingly until I tipped the shells into the colander and half of them promptly slid down the plughole. We salvaged what we could, added a knob of butter, and ate them anyway, laughing at our own clumsiness while the tide whispered just beyond the garden wall.

By the second evening we’d settled into an easy rhythm: morning stroll along the beach for fresh air and appetite, a late lunch at The Neptune in Old Hunstanton—crab sandwiches on thick granary bread—then back to the cottage to potter about with whatever we hadn’t managed to finish earlier. The little pantry proved handy for storing the odd wedge of Norfolk dapple we kept forgetting to eat, and the oven, once mastered, turned out an impressive tray of jacket potatoes topped with crab meat and a squeeze of lemon.

Sitting there, toes tucked under the blanket on the sofa, watching the last of the light fade over the sea, I realised how rarely we slow down enough to let a meal stretch across an entire afternoon. The mishap on the lane already felt like part of the story rather than an inconvenience, and the cottage, with its warm kitchen and the sound of waves just outside, had quietly reminded us that sometimes the best holidays are measured in mouthfuls rather than miles.