We were barely five minutes from the ferry when the satnav decided Porth Ewyn was apparently somewhere in the middle of the Irish Sea. By the time we’d turned round twice and pulled over to check the paper map, we were both laughing too hard to be cross. When we finally bumped down the single-track lane and spotted the little white cottage tucked behind the dunes, the relief was instant.

The first person we met was Mrs Hughes from the farm next door, who appeared with a basket of eggs before we’d even opened the boot. “You’ll be the ones who got lost by the roundabout,” she said, eyes twinkling. Turned out the whole village had heard about our detour; the postman had radioed ahead. We stood chatting in the lane while the gulls wheeled overhead, and within minutes she’d given us the unofficial tour: which field the children use for football, where the honesty-box veg stall is, and exactly how many minutes it takes to reach the beach if you cut through the dunes rather than follow the road.

Later that afternoon, while we were trying to work out the quirky hot-water system, a neighbour called Dai wandered over with a spanner and a story. He’d grown up in the cottage before it became a holiday let, and every sentence came with a different memory: the storm that washed the garden wall away, the summer the seals pupped right by the slipway. We ended up on the bench outside, mugs of tea going cold, listening to him describe the winter tides the way some people talk about old friends.

By evening the light had that soft, lingering quality you only seem to get on Anglesey. We wandered down to the shore for fish and chips from the little van that parks by the car park, and the woman serving us already knew our order before we’d opened our mouths. “Mrs Hughes said you like plenty of vinegar,” she grinned. We ate on a driftwood log, watching a cocker spaniel chase the last of the day-trippers, and felt, oddly, as though we’d been adopted rather than merely checked in.

Back at Porth Ewyn the windows were glowing against the dusk, and the sound of the waves carried straight through the open door. Lying in bed later, listening to the occasional late dog-walker pass by, I found myself thinking how strange it is that getting lost for ten minutes had somehow made us part of the place already.