We nearly didn’t make it to Bryn Mor at all. The sat-nav decided to take us down a lane so narrow that the wing mirrors brushed the hedges, and just as I was telling my partner we’d definitely taken a wrong turn, a tractor appeared round the bend. We both froze like rabbits, then burst out laughing when the driver simply reversed twenty metres and waved us past with a grin. By the time we reached the little white cottage perched above the beach road, my shoulders had finally dropped.

The first thing that struck me was the quiet. No traffic hum, just the soft rush of waves and a blackbird somewhere in the garden. We dumped our bags by the door and decided to stretch our legs before unpacking. The lane behind the house looked promising, so we followed it, expecting it to loop back to the seafront. Instead it narrowed into a sandy track that wound between bracken and low stone walls.

Half an hour later we were properly lost, which is how we found the hidden cove. One minute we were arguing about whether to turn left at the next gate, the next we were standing on a crescent of pale sand tucked between two rocky headlands. No signs, no car park, just a driftwood bench someone had clearly dragged down from the field above. We sat there until our fingers went numb, watching oystercatchers skitter along the tideline.

That accidental detour set the tone for the whole weekend. Every time we meant to head somewhere sensible we ended up somewhere better. A footpath we took “just to see where it goes” led us to a tiny freshwater stream trickling over flat stones into the sea; we paddled like children, shoes in hand. Another evening we followed a local dog-walker’s tip about a bench with “the best sunset,” only to discover an old lookout point half-hidden by gorse where the sky turned peach and gold for nearly an hour.

Back at Bryn Mor each night, the cottage felt like the perfect base for these small adventures. From the upstairs window you could just glimpse the curve of the bay, and the kitchen table became our map-planning station, covered in hastily scribbled directions and half-eaten Welsh cakes. I kept thinking how easy it is, when you live in a city, to book every hour of a holiday in advance. Here, the best moments arrived because we’d taken a wrong turn or followed a whim.

By Sunday morning I’d stopped checking the time altogether. We wandered down to the beach again, this time on purpose, and still managed to discover a rock pool we’d missed the day before. Standing there with cold feet and salt on my lips, I realised the real gift of Bryn Mor wasn’t the cottage itself, lovely as it was, but the way it nudged us off the map and into the quiet corners of Anglesey that most visitors never reach.