We’d barely got the hire car unpacked when the satnav decided to send us down the wrong lane, so there we were, reversing into a hedge outside 5 Longshore while a chap in a faded blue jumper strolled over with a spaniel and asked if we were “the ones who’d booked the little place by the slipway.” Turns out that was Reg, who’d lived two doors down for forty-odd years and seemed to know the cottage better than we did. He pointed out the trick with the stiff back gate, then wandered off muttering something about pasties cooling on the side.

By the time we’d got the kettle on, there was a knock at the door and a woman in a bright yellow anorak introduced herself as Maureen from the surf shop on the front. She’d brought a spare key she reckoned the owners had left with her “just in case,” and stayed long enough to tell us the tide times, the best bench for watching the fishing boats, and why the local seagulls were “a right menace after half-five.” We were still laughing when she left, only to find Reg had returned with a small bunch of rosemary “for the potatoes, mind.”

Later that afternoon we nipped down to the beach for a quick look, and a teenage lad on a bike stopped to ask if we needed directions to the chippy. When we said we were staying at 5 Longshore he grinned and said his auntie used to clean there; apparently the sofa still had a spring that poked you if you sat in the wrong spot. We thanked him, then spent the next ten minutes trying to locate said spring while the kettle whistled again.

By evening the light had gone soft over the water, and we found ourselves chatting to an older couple who’d paused on the lane with their terrier. They asked how we’d found the cottage, and before we knew it we were swapping stories about previous holidays, dodgy satnavs, and the time their grandson tried to surf in wellies. It felt less like small talk and more like being gently adopted for the week.

Sitting on the little bench outside 5 Longshore with a mug of tea going cold, I realised the mishap with the hedge hadn’t just got us here—it had opened the door, quite literally, to half the neighbourhood. Maybe that’s what stays with you longer than any view: the feeling that you arrived as strangers and were already being checked on by people who knew the quirks of the gate, the sofa, and the seagulls better than you ever would.