We’d barely got the hire car off the A30 when the satnav decided St Ives was best reached via a single-track lane the width of a wheelbarrow. By the time we’d reversed into someone’s hydrangeas twice, I was convinced the cottage would be a let-down after all that. It wasn’t. Boscarne sat just above Porthminster Beach, its slate roof glinting in the late sun, and the first thing I noticed was the smell of salt and warm pasty crumbs drifting from the open kitchen window.

We were still unloading the boot when a woman in a bright yellow anorak wandered over from the neighbouring cottage. “You the ones who nearly took out my washing line?” she asked, nodding at the car. Her name was Maureen, and she’d lived in St Ives “since the artists were still affordable.” Within five minutes she’d told us which bakery did the best saffron buns and which beach steps were lethal after rain. She also insisted we borrow her spare key because “the lock on Boscarne’s front door has a mind of its own.”

That evening we wandered down to the harbour for fish and chips. At the counter a man in a flat cap asked if we were “the new lot at Boscarne.” Word travels fast when your cottage is five minutes from the sand. He turned out to be Derek, retired lifeboat crew, who gave us a ten-minute masterclass on tide times and which seagulls were “proper little thieves.” When I mentioned the satnav fiasco he laughed so hard he nearly dropped his pickled onion. “Happens to everyone,” he said. “Last week a couple from Bristol ended up in Zennor because their phone thought ‘Boscarne’ was a postcode in Birmingham.”

Next morning the tide was out, revealing acres of damp sand perfect for a walk. We bumped into Maureen again, this time with a Jack Russell called Barry who immediately claimed my left trainer as his own. While I hopped about trying to retrieve it, Maureen told us about the old lifeboat station and how the local kids still race crabs along the harbour wall every August. She asked whether we’d noticed the driftwood heart someone had nailed above Boscarne’s porch; apparently Derek’s grandson made it after a storm two winters back.

By the time we reached the cottage again my shoes were full of sand and my phone was full of numbers for “just in case you need anything.” Sitting on the little bench outside, watching the last surfers wobble back to shore, I realised the journey mishap hadn’t ruined the start at all; it had simply handed us the quickest introduction to the place. St Ives hadn’t felt like somewhere we were visiting; it already felt like somewhere people expected us to return to, preferably without flattening any more shrubs on the way in.