We nearly didn’t make it past the first five minutes. I’d been so busy congratulating myself on remembering the satnav that I clean forgot about the final turn, and before I knew it we were wedged in a hedge with a tractor driver offering cheerful but unhelpful directions through the window. By the time we rolled up to the little lane that leads to 4 Bed Cottage, the sun was already high and the car boot was half-open from the last attempt at reversing.

The cottage itself sat quietly behind a low stone wall, cream walls glowing in the afternoon light, and the moment we stepped inside I felt that lovely, sudden drop in pace that only a proper Devon bolthole can give you. The kitchen smelled faintly of woodsmoke from the Rayburn, and someone had left a jar of local honey on the table with a note saying “help yourselves.” We did, straight away, standing there with the fridge door open like children who’d just been handed the keys to summer.

That first evening we didn’t unpack properly. We dragged the garden chairs onto the small patio, poured something cold, and watched the light slide down the fields towards the sea. The plan had been fish and chips in the village, but the view and the stillness got the better of us; instead we ate bread and cheese and called it dinner. The next morning I woke to the sound of gulls and the soft clink of someone’s teaspoon on the patio below. No alarm, no emails, just the faint promise of a day with nothing urgent in it.

We spent most of that day doing very little. A slow wander down the lane brought us to the little cove, where the tide was out and the sand still held the cool of the morning. We stayed for hours, reading paperbacks that had been left on the cottage shelves, occasionally looking up to watch a fishing boat putter past. Back at the house the patio became our headquarters; books, sun hats, half-finished cups of tea, and the occasional debate about whether it was too early for another slice of cake. It wasn’t.

By the third afternoon I realised I hadn’t checked my phone since breakfast. The signal’s patchy anyway, but more than that, there simply wasn’t anything I needed to know. The cottage, with its mismatched mugs and the slightly creaky garden gate, seemed designed for exactly this kind of gentle surrender. We walked to the beach again at sunset, shoes in hand, stopping to watch the sky turn peach over the water. On the way back we picked up pasties from the shop in the village and ate them at the kitchen table with the windows wide open, listening to nothing but the distant hush of the sea.

I think that’s what stays with you: not the grand plans or the packed itinerary, but the way the days stretch when you let them. By the time we loaded the car again, the hedge incident already felt like ancient history. All that remained was the quiet certainty that sometimes the best thing you can do on holiday is absolutely nothing at all, preferably with a view of the sea and a second cup of tea.