We’d barely made it out of the station car park before the first thing went wrong. I’d managed to drop my train ticket straight into a puddle, and by the time I’d fished it out, it looked more like a soggy tissue than anything that might convince a ticket inspector. Still, we were only half an hour from Tenby, and once the little two-carriage train rattled into the station, the whole mishap felt less important than the smell of salt in the air.

Cladebrine sat just on the edge of town, tucked behind a low stone wall with a wooden gate that creaked in exactly the way you hope a cottage gate will creak. The owners had left a key in a little tin under the rosemary bush, and stepping inside felt like walking into someone else’s Sunday afternoon. There was a squashy sofa facing the garden, a kettle already filled, and a faint smell of woodsmoke even though the fire hadn’t been lit yet.

We didn’t unpack properly; we just dropped our bags and wandered straight out the back door. The garden was small but perfectly formed, with a gravel path looping around a couple of apple trees and a bench that caught the last of the afternoon sun. We sat there with mugs of tea for what must have been an hour, watching a blackbird hop along the fence and listening to nothing much at all.

The next morning we woke late and decided that “doing something” could wait until after elevenses. Instead we wandered the few minutes into town, bought fresh bread and a paper, and came straight back to the garden. I read the same paragraph three times before giving up and just watching the clouds drift over the rooftops. My partner disappeared inside and reappeared with a blanket, and we spent the rest of the morning moving only to refill the teapot.

By the second afternoon we’d developed a proper routine. A slow walk along the harbour wall, stopping to watch the fishing boats bob, then back to Cladebrine for lunch on the bench. We never quite made it to the beach proper; the garden kept pulling us in. There were moments when I caught myself reaching for my phone out of habit, only to put it down again when I realised there was genuinely nothing I needed to check.

On the final morning the sun came out properly, and we sat with the doors wide open, listening to the gulls and the distant clink of rigging from the harbour. I found myself thinking how rarely I let a whole day unfold without a plan, and how much lighter everything felt when I stopped trying to fill every gap. We left the key back under the rosemary, promising ourselves we’d come again when the apples were ready to pick.