New view of island culture

More years ago than I wish to recall, I stood with my parents on a promenade at Cowes on the Isle of Wight to watch the Cunard liner Queen Mary pass Arcadia, another liner of the period, on its way to dock at Southampton.

It was our first family holiday and our only one which involved crossing water to reach our destination. We felt we were travelling overseas. I fished off Ryde Pier, collected coloured sand at Alum Bay and was impressed by the chalky outcrops of The Needles.

We arrived by ferry and stayed in a large room at an ivy-covered guesthouse in Ryde that had been a vicarage in a previous life. Happy days.

Today, the Queen Mary is a floating hotel and entertainment centre in Long Beach, California, and I am walking the length of Ryde Pier, having travelled across the Solent from Portsmouth on the busy Wightlink catamaran.

The memories of that family holiday tumble through my mind as I approach the town centre. Has the Isle of Wight changed? Is it still that quaint outpost of Britain, a cream-teas-and-scones sort of place, with thatched cottages, neat hedgerows, country lanes and none of the candy floss and Kiss-Me-Quick-hat nonsense that marks the mainland's bawdy seaside resorts?

Some things have changed. There are "No Fishing" signs on Ryde pier. Paddle-steamers no longer deliver passengers to the pier railhead, and steam trains have been replaced by diesel.

The Isle of Wight, though, appears much as I remembered it. On the beach at Ventnor, the last of the summer holidaymakers are dipping their toes into the water or sheltering from the stiff breeze while supping pints of beer at the Spyglass Inn.

There is a small crowd eyeing the freshly caught fish at the Ventnor Haven Fishery, some of which has already been delivered to The Hambrough, a small hotel which commands great sea views (especially from rooms one and two) and offers the kind of fine-dining experience for which the island is gathering a formidable reputation.

Queen Victoria was a fan of Ventnor's warm microclimate, known for its restorative properties. She and Prince Albert built Osborne House, a summer home at East Cowes. The view over the Solent reminded Albert of the Bay of Naples, and although on some days the water can be blue and inviting, I have to say it's not quite the Amalfi Coast.

It was at Osborne House that Queen Victoria regularly bathed and where her children learned to swim. "Drove to the beach with my maids and went in the bathing machine, where I undressed and bathed in the sea for the first time in my life. I thought it delightful till I put my head under water, when I thought I should be stifled," Queen Victoria wrote in her journal.

In more recent times, Osborne House has opened its private beach to visitors. Entry to the beach is included in the admission fee to the house and gardens, so visitors can enjoy the scenic spot - complete with the restored bathing machine and the alcove where Victoria sat admiring the view and writing her journal.

The Victorian poet laureate Alfred, Lord Tennyson, also had a home on the Isle of Wight and his life is celebrated with the Tennyson Trail, a 24km walk from Carisbrooke Castle to The Needles. The trail passes Farringford House at the foot of Tennyson Down. Now self-catering accommodation, it was here that Tennyson lived and worked for 40 years, and his study has been preserved.

Indeed, it seems the Isle of Wight is seeking to create a visitor experience which goes beyond the traditional image of sailing regattas and crab sandwiches. It is, for example, making progress in becoming a centre of artistic activity, with a thriving community of painters, ceramicists and sculptors, whose work is showcased in a 19th-century converted brewery at the Quay Arts centre in Newport.

A Taste Trail has also been developed to draw attention to the island's leading chefs and producers. Depending on the time of year, you might find some of the only apricots grown in Britain, wild sea bass from the waters around Bembridge, 12 different types of garlic or Isle of Wight blue cheese.

Another of the island's hotels making culinary waves is Priory Bay at Seaview, where chef Oliver Stephens, formerly of Noma in Copenhagen and before that the two-Michelin-starred restaurant Les Ambassadeurs (Hotel de Crillon) in Paris, has introduced Noma's "locavore" ethos to the hotel, using produce from the hotel's 24ha estate as well as the island's seafood, meat, fruit and vegetables.

Forty-four years on from a performance by Jimi Hendrix at the Isle of Wight Festival, when 600,000 are estimated to have turned up, the island is not looking to reinvent itself, rather to refine and build on its core attractions.

The annual Bestival, attracting a more modest 50,000 music fans, still comes up with the big-name performers and DJs, and sits in the island's calendar alongside more traditional events such as the Wizard Week on the Isle of Wight Steam Railway, the Garlic Festival, the Walking Festival in May (the largest in the UK) and Cowes Week regatta in August, a highlight of the British sporting summer calendar since 1826.

In fact, whatever your interest, the Isle of Wight seems to have a festival to suit, from real ale to jazz, Jaguar and Morris Minor cars, wine and cycling.

David Thornton, chief executive of Visit Isle of Wight, says a greater number of visitors are choosing short breaks instead of day trips, which has given a significant economic boost to the island's tourism sector.

He says it is important for the Isle of Wight to give visitors distinctive experiences, one of which is the focus on the island's Jurassic history. More than 25 different species of dinosaurs are recognised to have lived on the Isle of Wight when it was still connected to mainland Europe

Dinosaur Isle is Britain's first purpose-built dinosaur attraction, where visitors can walk back through fossilised time to the period of the dinosaurs, 120 million years ago.

At Ryde there is one of Britain's more unusual museums - a tribute to Donald McGill, the man who teased seaside visitors with his saucy postcard illustrations.

The cards mostly featured an array of attractive young women, large ladies, Scotsmen in kilts, drunken middle-aged men, honeymoon couples and vicars with red noses. Double entendres were the hallmark of McGill's cards.

An example:

A man and woman are at the seaside.

Man: "I stop at the Grand Hotel"

Woman: "I stop at nothing."

This particular card was banned in Ryde after a complaint from a local vicar.

McGill fell foul of several local censorship committees, which culminated in a show trial held in Lincoln in 1954.

The charge against McGill was breaking the Obscene Publications Act 1857. He was eventually found guilty and made to pay a £50 fine and £25 costs. The wider result was a blow to the seaside postcard industry.

At the peak of their popularity, the sale of these postcards reached 16 million a year. Individual seafront shops would sell as many as 10,000 a year, the majority of them in the peak summer months of July and August

Today, the Donald McGill Postcard Museum in Ryde's Union Street contains thousands of McGill's cards - 2500 of them attached to the ceiling. And although McGill was best known for his saucy cards, his work also embraced such topics as the perils of drink, two world wars, parenthood and religion. (The museum is currently closed, but is expected to re-open by late March.)

"It's exciting to be able to sell these banned cards once again," says James Bissell-Thomas, owner of the Donald McGill Postcard Museum. "The majority of these 'obscene' cards were actually really quite innocent and it seemed to be a bit of a witch-hunt."