We’d barely turned off the main road towards Treestumps when the satnav decided we needed a closer look at a ditch. One minute we were following the polite little arrow, the next the boot was half-submerged in muddy water and two carrier bags of Welsh cakes were floating towards the hedge. By the time we’d hauled everything out and wiped cream from the passenger seat, we were both laughing too hard to be properly cross, and the cottage’s wooden sign felt like a reward for surviving the first five minutes.

Treestumps sits just back from the dunes, its deck looking straight out to the low-tide sweep of sand. We dumped our bags, shook the last crumbs from the car, and headed straight for the fridge. The owners had left a welcome note and a small wedge of Caerphilly; we sliced it onto the crackers we’d bought in the Co-op at Benllech and called it lunch while the kettle boiled. Already the mishap felt like part of the place.

That evening we wandered the short path to the Ship Inn. The menu promised cockles and laverbread, and we ordered both, plus a shared portion of Anglesey mussels in cider. The portions were generous enough that we ended up boxing half the mussels to reheat the next day, which turned into an unexpected triumph when we tipped them into a quick tomato sauce and ate them with crusty bread on the deck. We congratulated ourselves on being resourceful until we realised we’d forgotten to buy butter.

Next morning the weekly produce stall appeared in the car park at the top of the lane. We came away with a bag of new potatoes, a couple of fat leeks, and some smoked mackerel from the fish van. Back at Treestumps the tiny kitchen suddenly felt ambitious. I tried turning the leeks and potatoes into soup while my partner pan-fried the mackerel with lemon. The soup was edible, the fish was perfect, and the single scorched leek that escaped onto the hob provided the evening’s running joke.

By the third night we’d settled into a rhythm: morning coffee on the deck watching the tide, a late lunch at the café in Benllech for their legendary bacon baps, and then back to the cottage to cook whatever we hadn’t finished earlier. One afternoon we bought ready-made Welsh rarebit mix from the deli and discovered it only needed ten minutes under the grill; we ate it with a bottle of Welsh cider and felt almost domestic.

The little food mishaps kept coming—the forgotten butter, the soup that needed twice the salt, the time I dropped an entire punnet of cherry tomatoes under the table—but nothing felt like a disaster. Sitting on the deck after each meal, watching the last light on the water, I found myself wondering why we so rarely cook like this at home. Maybe it takes a slightly damp car, a narrow kitchen, and a view of the sea to remind you that simple food, eaten slowly, is usually enough.