I set off from York with the usual over-optimism about traffic, only to find myself stuck behind a tractor for twenty minutes on the A64. By the time I reached Scarborough the sat-nav decided the last turning didn’t exist, so I ended up circling the back streets until a handwritten sign for “Tennyson House – private lane” pointed me down what looked like someone’s driveway. The sat-nav sulked and told me to “turn around when possible,” but the little white cottage at the bottom of the track was already waving hello with its blue door and pots of geraniums.

The key was under the boot-scraper, exactly as promised, and the first thing that struck me was the smell of the sea drifting straight through the open window. I dumped my bag, made a cup of tea in the cheerful yellow kitchen, and decided a quick stroll “just to the end of the lane” would help shake off the drive. Twenty minutes later I was nowhere near the main beach. Instead I’d wandered onto a narrow footpath that ducked behind a row of allotments and came out on a stretch of grassy clifftop I hadn’t known existed. Below me the tide was out, revealing rock pools that glinted like someone had scattered bottle-green glass.

A handwritten notice pinned to a fence offered “eggs and early rhubarb – honesty box,” so I followed the arrow and found myself in a tiny community garden tucked between two houses. An elderly chap in a flat cap was tying up runner beans; he nodded as if lost ramblers were perfectly normal and pointed me toward a gap in the hedge that led to South Bay’s quieter northern edge. From there a wooden staircase, half-hidden by brambles, dropped to a sliver of sand that felt miles from the amusement arcades. I paddled for a bit, shoes in hand, then noticed a painted arrow on a low wall that read “café this way – 3 mins.” Three minutes turned into fifteen because the path zig-zagged through someone’s back garden and past a line of beach huts before depositing me at a kiosk selling proper crab sandwiches.

By the time I wandered back to Tennyson House the light was turning gold and the cottage looked even cosier with its lamp glowing in the window. I sat on the little bench outside with my crab sandwich, watching a blackbird investigate the geraniums, and realised I’d spent the whole afternoon getting deliberately lost. It struck me that sometimes the best bits of a holiday aren’t the ones you plan; they’re the ones the sat-nav can’t find.