It was harvest time and rice was drying in front of stilted huts between which pigs snuffled.
Most of the huts right on the beach are owned by locals, and are best viewed and hired on the spot.
Seasoned backpackers who visited Thailand 30 years ago might find the pace familiar: it's pleasingly slow and sleepy, with simple stripped-back bamboo beach huts for just $7 a night, and three hours of electricity daily.
Rooms from £7.50, huts from £12 (open year round), +91 942 082 0470, jardim-a-mar.com Vivenda Dos Palhacos, Majorda This converted Portuguese villa just 1km from Majorda beach has six guestrooms and bucketloads of personality.
Among the most vulnerable are older people and poorer people, many of whom live in slums or farm huts with no access to air conditioners or sometimes even trees which could cast shade.
The hotel sits in a no-man's land, right next to the train station, but has a unique position – in one direction it looks out over the bustling fishing port of Le Tréport, in the other across the long pebble beach and brightly-painted bathing huts of Mer-les-Bains.
Weekend riders will stay in a woodland campsite with locally sourced food and a bar, and can upgrade from tents to luxury shepherds' huts for an extra £15.
After achieving their goal of reaching explorer Douglas Mawson's huts, our intrepid explorers became stuck in sea ice as they tried to return.
There are also several luxury beach huts to rent if you decide to stay.
You can choose between beachside rooms, village-side rooms and beach huts, each a simple bed-bathroom-mosquito net affair, retaining the old Goan feel (at old Goa prices) while offering good service, proper coffee and decent food in the charming communal area.
It was decades before the outside world learned anything of what went on in the warren of dilapidated huts surrounding the ugly Edwardian mansion in Buckinghamshire, but the bright young women recruited from secretarial colleges, the armed forces, or straight from school, scarcely knew any more.
