We’d only just turned off the main road when the satnav decided we were in a field. Typical. I pulled over, muttered something unrepeatable, and we reversed out again, only to meet a chap on a bicycle who’d already clocked our confusion. “Looking for the cottage, are you?” he asked, as if he’d been waiting all morning. Turned out he was the chap who’d left the key under the flowerpot, and within five minutes we were following him down a narrow lane lined with whitewashed houses, him shouting directions over his shoulder while we tried not to clip any wing mirrors.

By the time we reached the cottage itself, half the street seemed to know we’d arrived. A woman in a bright pink fleece popped her head over the fence with a cheery “You’ll want milk, then?” before we’d even opened the boot. She introduced herself as Maureen and explained, in great detail, that the corner shop shut at four but the honesty box outside her garage usually had spare pints if we were desperate. Her husband, Dave, appeared moments later with a wheelbarrow full of kindling “just in case the evenings turn nippy,” which made us feel both looked-after and slightly incompetent.

We’d barely unpacked when another neighbour wandered over with a Jack Russell called Biscuit who immediately claimed the doormat. “He thinks every new arrival is here to walk him,” the owner laughed, and before we knew it we were being given a five-minute briefing on the best stretch of beach for a morning stroll, complete with tide times scribbled on the back of a till receipt. It felt less like checking into a holiday let and more like being adopted by the entire lane.

Later, while we were still trying to work out which key opened what, a teenage lad on a skateboard stopped to ask if we needed help with the Wi-Fi password. He turned out to be Maureen’s grandson and happily spent ten minutes explaining that the router needed a “good thump” every now and then. By the time he left, we had a list of local recommendations, two borrowed torches, and the distinct impression that privacy was not going to be an issue.

Sitting on the little bench outside with a cup of tea that evening, watching the last of the light fade over the dunes, I couldn’t help smiling at how quickly we’d gone from lost strangers to honorary residents. The cottage itself was lovely—warm, roomy, and perfectly placed—but it was the people who’d made the first few hours feel less like a holiday and more like popping round to a very friendly village.