We set off from London on a Friday morning with the vague plan of stopping for lunch somewhere sensible, but the M25 had other ideas. By the time we reached the A27, we were both starving and mildly irritable, so when the satnav suggested a quick detour through Littlehampton for “local provisions,” we took it as divine intervention. The small Tesco Metro looked promising until I managed to drop an entire tray of strawberries in the middle of the aisle. Bright red fruit skittered under the feet of half a dozen shoppers while the checkout lady offered the sort of sympathetic smile that suggested this wasn’t her first berry-related incident. We left with a slightly squashed replacement punnet, a loaf of sourdough, and the beginnings of a story we’d be telling for the rest of the weekend.

Sea Estate House sits just a pebble’s throw from the beach, and the moment we stepped inside the smell of fresh paint and sea air hit us at once. The kitchen was bigger than ours at home, which immediately felt like both a blessing and a quiet challenge. We unpacked our slightly damaged strawberries, the bread, and the emergency sausages we’d grabbed on the way out of town, then wandered down to the front for fish and chips from the kiosk on the promenade. Sitting on a bench with paper parcels on our laps, watching the tide come in, felt like the proper start to a Sussex weekend.

The next morning we headed to the weekly market in Littlehampton’s high street. Stalls offered everything from local honey to enormous pork pies, and we came away with a wedge of Sussex blue cheese, a crusty loaf, and some fat asparagus that looked too good to ignore. Back at the house we attempted a heroic fry-up, only slightly hindered by the fact that neither of us could remember how the quirky electric hob worked. The eggs were a touch overdone, but the view from the kitchen window made up for it: a strip of shingle beach, a few early dog-walkers, and the low grey line of the Isle of Wight in the distance.

By evening we were ready for something more ambitious. The pub at the end of the road, a proper old boozer with nautical prints and a log burner, served excellent local ale and a steak-and-ale pie that made us both declare we’d never need to cook again. We still tried, of course. The following lunchtime saw us attempting to grill mackerel we’d bought from the fishmonger that morning. The skin stuck, the flesh flaked into the tray, and we ended up eating it anyway, laughing as we picked stray bones from our plates while the smell of charred fish drifted out to the garden.

In between meals we wandered the short stretch of beach, collected a few shells for no good reason, and returned to the house to make endless cups of tea. Every time I opened the fridge I was reminded of those runaway strawberries and the ridiculous way small disasters can colour an entire trip. Yet somehow the mishap had set a gentle tone: nothing needed to be perfect, only shared. By Sunday afternoon, when we packed the car again, the boot was lighter on supplies but heavier on the comfortable sort of memories that come from simple food, a few wrong turns, and the quiet satisfaction of a weekend spent mostly between the hob and the nearest pub.