We set off from the ferry with the sort of optimism that only a long drive and a bag of Welsh cakes can inspire, and promptly took the wrong turning just outside Menai Bridge. The sat-nav, convinced we were already at the cottage, sent us down a single-track lane that narrowed until the hedges brushed both wing mirrors. By the time we realised our mistake the lane had petered out beside a shingle cove no bigger than a back garden, tucked behind a stand of wind-bent hawthorn. Rhianfa Cottage itself was still half a mile away, but the view across the Menai Strait was so unexpectedly lovely that we parked up and stayed for a while, eating slightly squashed sandwiches while a heron watched us from a rock.

That accidental detour set the tone for the whole weekend. Rather than retrace our steps we followed a footpath that hugged the shoreline, boots crunching over bladderwrack and the odd lost welly. Every few hundred yards another tiny inlet appeared, each one quieter than the last, until we found ourselves on a stretch of sand that couldn’t have been more than twenty metres wide. A handwritten sign nailed to a fencepost simply read “Private – but the tide won’t mind,” which we took as permission enough. We paddled, skimmed stones, and felt gloriously pleased with ourselves for having stumbled upon what the guidebooks had somehow missed.

By the time we finally reached Rhianfa Cottage the light was already softening. The whitewashed walls glowed against a darkening sky, and the little slate porch offered just enough shelter to shake the sand from our socks. Inside, the rooms smelled faintly of woodsmoke and sea air, and from the upstairs window we could still see the cove where we’d begun. We spent the evening with the door propped open, listening to the gulls and the occasional distant splash of a seal, and agreed that getting lost had been the best decision we’d made all day.

The next morning we tried, and failed, to follow a proper map. Instead we let the tide dictate our route, wandering along the edge of fields where sheep stared at us with mild suspicion. One path led to a half-hidden boathouse whose doors had been left open to the weather; another brought us to a freshwater stream that ran straight onto the beach, perfect for rinsing sandy feet. We never managed to locate the “official” coastal path marked on leaflets, yet every wrong turn revealed another pocket of quiet shoreline that felt entirely our own.

By Sunday we had stopped apologising for our lack of direction. Standing on the low wall outside the cottage, coffee in hand, I realised that the best bits of the weekend had happened precisely because we’d given up trying to be efficient. The Menai Strait glittered in the early light, and somewhere down the lane a heron lifted off, heading toward the same nameless cove where our holiday had quietly begun.