We’d barely made it off the ferry at Holyhead when the satnav decided Trearddur was a charming suggestion rather than a firm instruction, so we ended up circling the same roundabout twice before spotting the handwritten sign for Tyn Towyn The Stables tucked down a narrow lane. The mishap came when I confidently reversed into what looked like a handy pull-in, only to discover it was actually someone’s driveway – and that someone, a cheerful chap in a flat cap called Glyn, was already halfway down it with a wheelbarrow of leeks.

“Sorry, love, you’ll have the post van blocked if you stay there,” he called, not unkindly, and within thirty seconds he’d directed us the proper way, offered a running commentary on which potholes to avoid, and somehow extracted the fact that we were “first-timers from over the bridge.” By the time we reached the whitewashed stables with their slate roof and view straight onto the dunes, Glyn had radioed ahead on what must have been the world’s oldest mobile to let “the girls at the shop” know we’d arrived safely.

Unpacking took longer than planned because every five minutes another local popped by. First came Mair, who runs the honesty-box egg stall on the lane, insisting we take a dozen “just while they’re still warm from the hens.” Then young Rhys from next door wandered over with a tide timetable scribbled on the back of a till receipt, explaining exactly when the best shells wash up on the little cove five minutes’ walk away. He stayed for a cuppa, told us the story of the time his grandad’s boat ended up in someone’s garden during a gale, and left with the promise of fresh crab if we fancied a barbecue later.

By late afternoon the place already felt less like a holiday let and more like an extension of the village. We sat on the low wall outside the stables, watching the tide creep in, when an elderly woman called Mrs Puw stopped her terrier to ask if we needed milk. Ten minutes later she’d returned with a pint bottle and a tale about the last people who stayed, who’d tried to surf in wellies. We laughed until our sides hurt, and I caught myself wondering how many other visitors had arrived intending to keep to themselves only to find the locals had other ideas.

That evening, as the sun slid behind the headland and the lights of a few fishing boats flickered on the water, it struck me that the real welcome wasn’t the cottage itself – lovely as it was – but the steady trickle of faces and stories that had turned our slightly chaotic arrival into the start of something properly neighbourly.