We’d barely made it out of King’s Lynn when the satnav decided to send us down a lane so narrow the hedges brushed both wing mirrors. I was convinced we’d end up reversing into someone’s driveway, but my other half insisted we were nearly there. Five minutes later we pulled up at Inglethorpe Hall, a solid old place just a short stroll from the dunes, and the relief was instant. The key was under the flowerpot exactly as promised, and within ten minutes the kettle was on and the car boot was empty.

The first afternoon set the tone for everything that followed. We dragged a couple of deckchairs onto the patchy lawn, kicked off our shoes, and simply sat. The sun felt properly warm for once, and the only sound was the occasional gull and the faint hush of waves beyond the dunes. I’d packed a stack of paperbacks “just in case,” and by teatime I’d already finished the first chapter of one and dozed through most of another. Every so often one of us would murmur something about maybe going for a walk, but neither of us moved.

The beach itself was only a few minutes across the field, reached by a sandy track that wound between marram grass. We wandered down in the late afternoon with nothing but a blanket and a thermos, spreading out on the dry sand just above the tideline. The North Sea looked almost Mediterranean in the sunshine, and we spent a ridiculous amount of time watching a single crab sidle in and out of its hole. By the time we wandered back, the light was turning golden and the cottage windows glowed invitingly.

Inside, the rooms felt made for doing very little. The sitting room had a big, squashy sofa that seemed to pull you in the moment you sat down, and the kitchen table was just the right size for spreading out a jigsaw or a lazy breakfast. We kept meaning to cook proper meals, but somehow toast and whatever was in the fridge kept winning. Evenings drifted by with the windows open, the scent of the sea drifting in, and the quiet broken only by the occasional creak of old floorboards.

I’d come away half-hoping to tick off a list of coastal walks and local sights, yet by the second morning I’d already forgotten what the list said. Instead we read in the garden until the pages grew too bright to see, then ambled down to the beach again with sandwiches wrapped in greaseproof paper. The tide was out, leaving wide stretches of firm sand perfect for slow, aimless strolling. We didn’t speak much; there didn’t seem any need.

By the last afternoon I caught myself wondering why we ever rush anywhere. The cottage had done its job without any effort on our part, simply by being there, solid and unhurried, with the sea just beyond the dunes and nothing more pressing than the next cup of tea.