I’d barely turned off the A5025 when the satnav decided I was better off in a field than on the lane to Tyddyn Glas. One wrong left and the car was nose-deep in a hedge, with a cheerful local farmer leaning on his gate watching the whole performance. “You’ll be after the holiday cottage then?” he called, before strolling over with a length of rope and a grin that suggested this wasn’t his first rescue. Five minutes later we were free, and he’d already invited us for a cuppa “once you’ve found your feet.”

By the time we reached the cottage, the light was fading over the beach and the smell of salt and warm grass met us at the door. The farmer’s wife, it turned out, lived two gates along and popped round with a basket of eggs before we’d even unpacked the car. “Don’t mind the dog,” she said, nodding at a scruffy collie already making himself at home on our doormat. We stood chatting on the path about the best tide for a quick dip and whether the seals had been showing near the point that week.

Next morning the postie stopped his van at the end of the track just to ask if we’d found the right beach yet. When I admitted we hadn’t ventured further than the garden gate, he spent ten minutes sketching a rough map on the back of an old envelope, complete with arrows pointing to the spot where the sand stays warm longest. His tip about the hidden path behind the dunes proved spot-on; we spent a happy hour watching oystercatchers while the collie dozed at our feet.

By teatime the farmer’s wife was back, this time with a slice of bara brith and a story about the time the tide surprised a wedding party on the same stretch of sand. We ended up sitting on the low wall outside the cottage, swapping tales about city life versus island winters, until the light turned that soft Anglesey gold and the dog decided our laps were fair game.

I hadn’t expected to spend so much of the first day talking to strangers, but there’s something about the pace here that makes it hard to stay inside. Every short walk seems to turn into a conversation, and every conversation seems to end with an invitation or a new shortcut. Sitting on the step that evening, listening to the waves and replaying the hedge incident, I realised the mishap had done more than just delay our arrival; it had opened the door to the very thing we’d come looking for—a slower, friendlier sort of holiday where the locals are part of the scenery.