We set off for The Keep full of good intentions and a paper map that hadn’t been updated since the nineties. The sat-nav on my phone decided to play dead just outside Colwyn Bay, so we followed the road signs instead and promptly took the scenic route through every back lane between there and Llandudno. By the time we found the right turning for the cottage, the boot was half full of carrier bags we’d bought in sheer panic at a petrol station, and I’d managed to scrape the wing mirror on a low stone wall. We pulled up laughing and slightly sweaty, the key safe blinking at us from beside a cheerful blue door.

The Keep itself felt instantly welcoming—low ceilings, a wood burner already laid, and windows that looked straight out over the sweep of the bay. We dumped the bags, made tea in mismatched mugs, and decided the scrape could wait. With the tide still out, we wandered down the lane behind the house instead of heading straight for the main promenade. The lane narrowed into a gravel track that ducked between two stone walls, and before we knew it we were on a footpath we hadn’t noticed on any map.

That path led us to a tiny cove tucked behind a tumble of rocks, completely hidden from the road. Driftwood lay in neat piles where someone had clearly been beachcombing, and a rope swing hung from an old hawthorn leaning over the pebbles. We spent the next hour there, shoes off, toes freezing, watching a cormorant dive for fish while the town carried on without us. Later, still mildly lost, we followed another narrow track that climbed behind the houses and opened onto a grassy headland. From up there the Great Orme looked close enough to touch, yet the only sounds were sheep and the distant chug of a fishing boat.

By the time we found our way back to The Keep the light had turned golden. We sat on the bench outside with fish and chips from the kiosk at the bottom of the lane, watching the last swimmers pack up on the main beach. I kept thinking how easily we could have spent the whole afternoon on the crowded promenade, yet one wrong turn—well, several—had handed us a quieter version of Llandudno we wouldn’t have known existed. The wing mirror still needed fixing, but for now the evening felt wide open, and so did the little lanes waiting behind the cottage.