I’d barely turned off the main road towards Woolacombe when the satnav decided we were already at Memory House, leaving us parked outside a chippy with a handwritten sign saying “No coaches, no excuses.” My partner insisted we were lost; I insisted the postcode knew best. Twenty minutes and three U-turns later we found the little lane behind the dunes, and there it was: a neat white cottage with a driftwood sign and a view straight onto the beach path. The key was under the flowerpot, just as promised, though the flowerpot had blown over and was now halfway across the garden.

We’d hardly dragged the bags inside when there was a knock. A woman in a bright yellow cagoule introduced herself as Maureen from next door. “You’ll be wanting milk, I expect,” she said, thrusting a plastic bottle at us before we’d even found the kettle. “And don’t mind the seagulls; they’ve been after my pasties since Tuesday.” Before we could thank her, her husband Len appeared behind her in wellies, asking if we knew how to work the Rayburn. We didn’t, but by the time he’d shown us, we’d also heard about the time the tide took his deckchair and about the new café owner who kept serving American-sized portions. “You’ll be full before you’ve paid,” he warned, then wandered off whistling.

Later, when we wandered down to the beach for fish and chips, the woman behind the counter recognised the cottage name on our bag. “Memory House, is it? Maureen’s lot always send newcomers down here. She says the seagulls can smell visitors.” We sat on the low wall eating from the paper, watching a man in a flat cap throw a tennis ball for a very wet spaniel. He caught us watching and wandered over. “First time?” he asked. We admitted it was. “Well, if you want the quiet end, walk left past the surf school before nine. After that it’s all wetsuits and whooping.” He introduced himself as Dave, said he’d lived in Mortehoe “since the council still had typewriters,” and gave us a tip about the honesty-box pasties at the farm gate up the lane.

By the time we got back, the light had gone soft and gold over the dunes. I stood in the doorway listening to the waves and thought how strange it was that within an hour of arriving we already had more local intel than we’d collected in a week at bigger places. Maybe that’s what happens when you get slightly lost and slightly helped: the place starts to feel like it’s in on the joke with you.