We’d barely turned off the main road when the satnav decided we were “arriving,” which would have been handy if we’d actually been anywhere near Number Six Corffe Cottages. Instead we found ourselves on a single-track lane hemmed in by high Devon hedges, the kind that make reversing feel like a full-contact sport. A tractor appeared, we both waved like lunatics, and in the scramble to find a passing place I managed to clip the wing mirror on a rogue bramble. Nothing broken, just a satisfying scratch and the sudden certainty that our “short cut” had gone very wrong.

Ten minutes later the lane opened onto a gravel track and there it was: a low stone cottage tucked behind a white gate, the sea a hazy strip beyond the fields. The owners had left the key in a little wooden box and a note saying “tea’s in the tin,” which felt properly welcoming after our detour. We dumped the bags, made a quick cuppa, and set off on what was meant to be a five-minute stroll to the beach path.

Naturally we took the wrong stile. Instead of sand we found ourselves following a narrow footpath that wound between bracken and blackthorn, the air thick with the smell of warm grass and distant manure. A handwritten sign half-hidden in the hedge pointed toward “old quarry walk,” so we followed it, mostly out of curiosity and partly because turning back felt like admitting defeat. The path dipped into a shallow combe where a stream had carved its own cool tunnel through the trees; we balanced along stepping stones someone had clearly placed with more enthusiasm than engineering skill.

Further on, a gap in the hedge revealed a tiny, almost secret cove we’d never have spotted from the road. No car park, no ice-cream van, just a crescent of pale sand and a couple of rock pools already being investigated by a small boy and his grandad. We paddled, found a perfectly round pebble that looked like a marble, and sat on a driftwood log watching a cormorant dry its wings on a half-submerged boulder. The tide was coming in gently, each wave nudging the line of seaweed a little higher, and for the first time since the bramble incident I felt properly relaxed.

By the time we wandered back the light had turned that soft, late-afternoon gold that makes everything look gentler. The cottage windows glowed as we approached, and I realised our entire afternoon had been an accident—the wrong turn, the wrong stile, the unexpected cove. It struck me that perhaps the best bits of any holiday are the ones you don’t plan at all.