We set off from Edinburgh on a drizzly Friday morning, the satnav promising an hour and a half to the 5 Bed Cottage in Anstruther. Naturally we managed to add an extra forty minutes by taking the scenic route through every single roundabout in Fife. By the time we bumped down the single-track lane that led to the cottage, the sky had cleared and the Firth of Forth glittered like someone had polished it just for us. The cottage itself sat right where the map claimed, a low, whitewashed building with a red door and a garden gate that squeaked like it was laughing at our late arrival. We tumbled out, stiff-legged, and the first thing that hit us was the salt on the air, sharp and clean.

After wrestling with the key safe (it refused to open until my partner remembered the code was upside-down on the booking email), we stepped inside to find the sort of homely chaos that instantly felt like ours: well-worn sofas, a kitchen table already set with mismatched mugs, and a view straight onto the little curve of beach just across the lane. We didn’t linger long. The tide was out, the light still good, so we grabbed jackets and set off for what we told ourselves would be “just a quick leg-stretch.”

Half an hour later we were properly lost. Instead of turning left at the end of the lane we’d turned right, following a narrow footpath that wound between bramble hedges and suddenly opened onto a hidden stretch of dunes we hadn’t noticed on any map. The sand here was finer, almost silver, and the only footprints belonged to oystercatchers. We followed them until the path petered out at a tiny freshwater burn trickling toward the sea. A weather-beaten bench sat half-buried in marram grass; someone had carved their initials and the date 1987 into the wood. We sat for a while, listening to the burn and the distant hush of waves, and it struck me how easy it is, even on holiday, to charge past the very places that make a trip feel special.

By the time we wandered back the sun was low, turning the cottage windows gold. We still hadn’t unpacked properly, but somehow that didn’t matter. The mishap with the satnav and the accidental detour had already given us the sort of afternoon you can’t book. Over mugs of tea on the doorstep we watched a fishing boat chug past, its lights just coming on, and I realised the real charm of the place wasn’t in any checklist of sights. It was in getting gloriously, wonderfully sidetracked.