We’d barely turned off the A477 when the satnav decided to have a little sulk and sent us down a lane that promptly narrowed to single-track. A quick three-point turn in someone’s driveway earned us a cheerful wave from a woman hanging out her washing, and by the time we’d righted ourselves we were already laughing about how “getting lost” had started early. Seacroft sat just beyond a low stone wall on the edge of Tenby’s quieter northern fringe, a neat whitewashed cottage with a slate roof that looked as though it had been waiting for us. The key was tucked under the flowerpot exactly as promised, and stepping inside felt like being handed the town’s gentler side on a plate: warm wooden floors, a window seat looking straight out to the water, and the faint smell of sea air drifting through an open sash.

After we’d dumped the bags we wandered out again, determined not to plan anything beyond “see where our feet take us.” The tide was out, so we followed the harbour wall round until the path petered into a gravel track that led us behind the lifeboat station. There, half-hidden behind a row of weather-beaten sheds, we found a tiny slipway that local fishermen clearly use for their smaller boats. Two men were sorting lobster pots, and one pointed us toward a footpath that climbed behind the sheds and up through scrubby grass. We hadn’t meant to stray so far from the obvious promenade, yet the track opened onto a narrow cove we hadn’t even noticed on the map. The sand was almost white in the late sun, and a single red kayak lay upside-down on a flat rock as though its owner had simply stepped away for a cup of tea.

We carried on, curiosity pulling us along a hedgerow path that threaded between back gardens and then dipped into a small wooded hollow. Brambles caught at our sleeves until the trees opened onto a grassy clearing with a bench someone had clearly built from driftwood. From there we could see the whole sweep of North Beach without another soul in sight, just gulls wheeling and the distant rumble of the train crossing the river bridge. It felt like Tenby’s version of a secret garden, and we sat for a while listening to the wind moving through the hawthorn. Later, when we finally turned back toward Seacroft, the cottage’s kitchen window glowed softly in the dusk, and we realised we’d spent the entire afternoon happily disoriented, following nothing more than the next bend in the path.

That first evening we cooked with whatever we’d grabbed from the little Spar on the high street, and the mishap of the satnav already felt like part of the story rather than an inconvenience. Sitting by the window seat with mugs of tea, we watched the lights come on along the harbour and talked about how easy it is, when you let go of a rigid plan, to stumble across places that feel like they belong only to the people who bother to wander. By the time we headed upstairs, the cottage already felt less like a rental and more like a quiet accomplice in our accidental discoveries, ready for whatever small wrong turn tomorrow might bring.