We set off from Barnstaple in high spirits, the satnav promising a gentle half-hour hop to our three-bed cottage just outside Bideford. Ten minutes later the road narrowed to a single track, brambles scraping the paintwork, and the cheerful voice calmly announced we’d missed the turning three miles back. By the time we found the right lane the light was fading, our nerves were frayed, and the cottage key safe had jammed. After a comical struggle involving a torch, a hairpin and rather more swearing than I’d like to admit, the door finally swung open to reveal low beams, a wood-burner already laid, and the faint scent of sea air drifting through an open window.

Morning brought clearer heads and the decision to “just pop out for milk.” Instead we spent the next three hours completely lost on tiny lanes that wound between high hedges and sudden glimpses of the Taw estuary. A hand-painted sign for “Appledore Hidden Slip” lured us down an unmarked track; minutes later we were standing on a shingle beach no wider than a back garden, the only footprints our own. A friendly local walking her spaniel told us it was once used by smugglers and still appears on no maps. We lingered, skimming stones, until the tide nudged our shoes.

Further accidental detours led us to a footpath behind the dunes that opened onto the old Bideford lifeboat station slipway, now quiet except for a few crabbers. From there an overgrown stile took us across a field to a tiny freshwater stream trickling straight onto the sand; we paddled, collected driftwood, and watched a seal bob offshore. By late afternoon we’d stumbled upon a clifftop bench we’d never have found had we followed the coastal path signs, and we sat there with pasties from the village shop, the whole of Bideford Bay spread beneath us.

Back at the cottage that evening, feet sandy and hair salty, I realised how rarely we actually follow plans on holiday. The satnav mishap had nudged us off every intended route, yet those wrong turns had handed us the quietest corners of the coastline—places the guidebooks never mention and the tide quietly keeps for itself.