We’d barely left the M5 when the satnav decided to send us down a lane so narrow the brambles scraped both wing mirrors at once. I was convinced we’d end up wedged between two hedgerows until a helpful tractor driver backed up and waved us through with a grin. By the time we finally pulled up outside Gatekeeper’s Cottage, my nerves were as frayed as the satnav’s patience, but the little stone place looked so welcoming that the whole ordeal suddenly felt worth it.

The cottage sits just a short stroll from the beach path, and the first thing I noticed was the smell of salt and woodsmoke drifting in through the open windows. We dumped our bags, flicked the kettle on, and immediately started planning where to eat. There’s a proper butcher’s in the high street that does the best pasties I’ve had in years, so we grabbed a couple still warm from the oven and ate them on the bench outside, flakes of pastry scattering onto the cobbles like edible confetti.

That evening we wandered down to the little pub at the end of the lane. It’s the sort of place where the menu is scribbled on a blackboard and changes depending on what the fishermen brought in. I ordered the local ale-battered fish and chips, while my other half went for the Somerset cider sausages with mash. Both arrived piping hot, the chips properly fluffy inside, and we lingered over a second pint, watching the sky turn peach above the rooftops.

The next morning we made a half-hearted attempt at cooking breakfast ourselves. Armed with eggs and bacon from the village shop, I managed to produce something that could generously be called “scrambled” while the toast went from golden to charcoal in under thirty seconds. We ended up laughing over slightly burnt soldiers and decided the café on the seafront might be a safer bet for the rest of the stay. Their full English came with proper thick-cut bacon and mushrooms that actually tasted of something, all washed down with builder’s tea so strong you could stand a spoon in it.

By the third day we’d fallen into a happy rhythm of market stalls in the morning and pub lunches in the afternoon. One stall sold fresh crab sandwiches that we carried down to the beach, sitting on our jackets because we’d forgotten a blanket. The seagulls were bold, but we guarded our lunch fiercely and only lost a single chip between us. Back at the cottage that evening I tried my hand at a simple pasta dish using local sausages and cream, and while it wasn’t exactly Michelin-starred, it tasted better than anything we could have bought ready-made.

What struck me most, though, was how quickly the cottage made us slow down. After the initial rush of finding food and working out the best pubs, we spent more time just sitting at the kitchen table with a loaf of fresh bread and local cheese, chatting about nothing in particular. The journey might have started with a comedy of errors, but the days that followed reminded me that sometimes the best holidays are the ones where the biggest decision is whether to have another portion of chips.