We’d barely been on the A55 for an hour when the satnav decided Pen-y-Bryn was somewhere near the middle of the Menai Strait, so we ended up doing a neat three-point turn in a lay-by while a coach full of day-trippers waved us on like traffic wardens. By the time we bumped down the little track to the cottage, the sun was already thinking about packing up for the day, but the view across the sand made the detour worth it.

The owners had left the key in the obvious place under the flowerpot, and the first thing we did was fling the windows open so the smell of warm grass and salt could come inside. The garden sloped straight onto a footpath that hugged the low cliffs, and even from the doorstep you could see families trailing along with buckets and windbreaks. We unpacked in record time—mainly because we’d forgotten the teabags—and then set straight off for a “quick leg-stretch” before supper.

Half an hour later we were halfway to the next cove, trainers already damp from an unexpected patch of bladderwrack, when the sky did that classic Anglesey trick of swapping blue for battleship grey in under ten minutes. We turned back, laughing at our own optimism, and spent the rest of the evening watching raindrops chase each other down the window while the kettle worked overtime.

Next morning the sun was back with apologies, so we laced up again and followed the coast path in the opposite direction, past the little row of beach huts and up onto the low headland. The tide was well out, leaving wide arcs of ridged sand that squeaked underfoot, and we took far too many photos of the same view from slightly different angles. Every so often the path dipped into a sheltered dip full of thrift and the sort of grass that invites you to sit down, which we did, sharing a slightly squashed flapjack while gulls argued overhead.

By the time we wandered back the clouds had regrouped, so we swapped walking boots for flip-flops and mooched along the shoreline instead, skimming stones and debating whether the water was “refreshing” or simply Baltic. The gentle self-reflection came somewhere between pebble number twelve and thirteen: we’d driven all this way dreaming of dramatic cliff scrambles and golden-hour swims, yet the happiest bit so far had been the unplanned detour, the sudden showers, and the fact that neither of us minded turning around. Pen-y-Bryn felt less like a place we’d booked and more like a quiet nudge to slow down and let the weather decide what happened next.