Forget the crowds: this underrated English island is packed with local charm and exciting new openings

Sheltered by St Boniface Down, Ventnor’s Undercliff has one of Britain’s mildest microclimates, often several degrees warmer than the mainland. Little wonder the town became a fashionable 19th-century health resort, its sea air prescribed as medicine, with Queen Victoria calling in for tea at The Royal Hotel (still around, now old-fashioned) while staying at Osborne House.

For my sister and me, growing up on the Isle of Wight in the 1970s and 1980s, Ventnor meant something less elevated….