Coming Home to the Comfort Food Café: The only heart-warming feel-good novel you need!. Debbie Johnson

sunlight streaking down onto waves that are racing in to foam over the sand. There are a few holiday-makers left, some with toddlers, some with dogs, all enjoying the last few days of what we could loosely call summer. There’s an ice cream van parked up, a bored-looking lad reading a collection of poetry by Yeats inside the cab. I silently applaud his taste, and start the trek up to the cafe itself.

      The path is long but not steep, with low-level steps cut into it and a handrail to hold onto when it starts to feel so high it’s vertigo-inducing. I pause every now and then, and let myself soak up the view. The higher you get, the more the colours change: sea that looked grey and white from land level now looks iridescent, merged shades of blue and green and turquoise, rippling and rolling on its way into the bay.

      The clifftops stretch off into the horizon on either side, yellow and red, rock meeting sand, jaggedly rising and falling as they disappear into the distance. I can see people walking along the paths, doing exactly the same as me, and pausing to enjoy the spectacle of the morning sunshine on the water. It’s so quiet as well – it may be the seaside, but it’s not the kind of place you find banana boats or fairground rides; all you can hear is the sound of the seagulls shrieking as they dive, the waves fizzing inland, and the occasional bark of a stick-chasing pooch.