We set off from the ferry port with the usual mix of excitement and mild panic, only to realise halfway to Caldey Lodge that someone had left the cooler bag of milk and butter on the kitchen table back home. By the time we pulled up outside the wooden-clad lodge tucked into Bier Wood, the kids were already debating whether we could survive three days on crisps and orange juice.

The first thing that hit me was the quiet. Not silence, exactly, but the sort of hush that comes when you step away from traffic and into pine-scented air. The lodge itself looked exactly like the pictures, only smaller and friendlier, with a little deck where two mismatched deckchairs sat waiting. Inside, the open-plan living space smelled faintly of fresh laundry and woodsmoke, and the sofa was already claiming my husband as its new owner.

We unpacked in that half-hearted way families do, shoes kicked off, bags dumped, someone hunting for the Wi-Fi password while the youngest immediately discovered the toy box that the owners had left in the corner. Within ten minutes the lodge felt less like a rental and more like a slightly tidier version of our own living room, complete with the same trail of discarded socks.

The garden, if you could call the strip of grass and gravel a garden, sloped gently towards a low fence, and beyond that the woods began. We ventured out with a bag of supermarket sandwiches, claiming the picnic bench before the midges noticed us. The children disappeared into the trees with sticks, reappearing every few minutes to report sightings of “massive” slugs and one very unimpressed robin. I sat with a lukewarm cup of tea, listening to the wind move through the birches and wondering why we don’t do this sort of nothing more often.

Later, after the sun dipped, we lit the wood-burner with more enthusiasm than skill. The first attempt sent a polite plume of smoke into the room, and we spent ten minutes flapping tea towels like a very British sitcom. Once it caught, though, the lodge warmed quickly, and we settled around the table with fish and chips from the takeaway in Tenby. The children argued gently over the last pickled onion while I watched the firelight flicker across the pine walls and felt the day’s small disasters settle into something cosy.

That first evening set the tone. No grand plans, just the gentle rhythm of lodge life: breakfast on the deck when the weather allowed, walks along the coastal path that started right at the end of the lane, and afternoons spent reading or colouring while the kettle kept boiling. The mishap with the cooler bag turned into an excuse to visit the little supermarket in town, where we bought local cheese and far too many Welsh cakes. By the third morning, leaving felt oddly reluctant. The lodge had done what we’d hoped without us noticing, turning three ordinary days into the sort of unremarkable memory that somehow sticks.