Sandpiper Cottages

The Sandpiper is six white cottages in a row behind the dune on the island side of the Jensen Beach causeway, with the beach a two-minute walk along a sandy path through the sea grapes. Each cottage has a bedroom, a sofa bed, a full kitchen, a screened porch with a table and two rockers, and an outdoor shower that is the thing everyone writes home about. They were built in the 1940s and have been rebuilt to the current storm code without losing the porches.

It is the place for a week: a cooler walked to the beach in the morning, lunch on the porch, the causeway sunset in the evening. The cottages sleep four, children are welcome, dogs are not, and the owner, Margit Lund, lives in the seventh cottage and keeps the bicycles, the beach chairs and the umbrellas in a shed by the path.

Weekly bookings have priority from January to April and most of the year is taken by people who were here last year; shoulder-season weeks and summer are the way in. Ask for cottage six, nearest the path.

Good to know

• The beach is a two-minute walk; the path is sand, not paved.
• Weekly bookings have priority in winter; shorter stays from May to November.
• Beach chairs, umbrellas and bicycles are in the shed, free.
• No dogs; the dune is a nesting area.
• Turtle season rules apply: porch lights off after dark from March to October.