The Bridge's "Midsummer" is riotous fun. Book now!

I went to a dance club with a couple of famous TV actors on Friday. I also sampled a Glastonbury-
like music festival. Then there were some Cirque de Soleil style acrobats doing ridiculously impossible things while hanging from silken sheets. And there was Shakespeare.

Rather remarkably, it was all Shakespeare.

The Bridge Theatre's new production of A Midsummer Night's Dream may be the most fun I have ever had in a theatre. (Well, it's pipped to the comedy post by Book of Mormon, but it's close.) This is Shakespeare's most accessible play. With the highly-physical comedy of love potions gone wrong, and its famous play-within-a-play open to lots of interpretation, it's not so important that you grasp every nuance of the 400-year-old language. It was my introduction to Shakespeare on a grade school trip and it's the play I've seen most, through numerous Shakespeare festivals, summer park productions and interpretations on the lawns of English country houses. There are at least three major film versions, the classic being the 1999 outing with Michelle Pfeiffer, Kevin Kline, Rupert Everett and Stanley Tucci. (Highly recommended.) But I've never enjoyed it more than I did in this rollicking, modern production.

At the start, I wasn't sure that would be the case. We entered to see the star attraction, Gwendoline Christie (better known to millions of fans as Game of Thrones' Brienne of Tarth) incarcerated in a glass box as the audience filed in around her. As with last year's exceptional Julius Caesar, this production was in the round with the "groundlings" playing an active role throughout. As the action started, the costuming was decidedly channelling The Handmaid's Tale, with everyone in sober colours and the women all wearing headscarves and sensible shoes. The interpretation highlights a plot point that's often overlooked in productions: the impending nuptials are forced ones. The hero Theseus won the Amazon Queen Hippolyta by defeating her in battle. This is not a love match but an act of political subjugation. Thus the casting of Christie was inspired; enraged, brooding warrior maiden is old hat for her.

Fortunately, things get brighter very quickly and we spend most of the play in the fairy world in the forests beyond Athens where Christie and Oliver Chris (a stalwart of British stage and TV, best known for the play King Charles III on both) play Titania and Oberon, queen and king of the fairies, as well as Hippolyta and Theseus. As is traditional. What is most definitely not traditional is that this production swaps parts, giving Titania the lines meant for Oberon and vice versa. Meaning that it's the man who falls into a ridiculous enchanted passion with a donkey-headed rustic, while the woman manipulates the action.

Not only does this bring some much needed balance to a play where the women are traditionally the subservient characters, but it's just plain funnier. And Chris is a genius of physical comedy. The scenes of passionate courtship between his Oberon and the Barry White wanna-be Bottom, played by Hammed Animashaun, will have you laughing so hard you'll be fighting to breathe. While the whole cast is strong it's these two, rather than the crowd-pulling Christie, who deliver the most memorable performances.

Christie is excellent as well, unsurprisingly, and brings a dignity to the role we don't usually see from Titania. She is a loving wife teaching her spoiled and complacent husband a much needed lesson before their warm reunion.

The groundlings are as much a character as the actors. They dance, they cheer, they join hands and circle the stage as bewitched lovers commit their madness. At one point, we shift scenes with an enormous white cloth being passed over their heads as pop music booms. The peasant players borrow a phone from the audience to check calendar dates, only returning it after a cast selfie. At the end, we all join in to the wedding festivities as cast and groundlings dance together, bouncing enormous inflatable moons around the theatre as Beyonce's Love on Top swells out of the sound system.

The staging makes the most of The Bridge's ability to bring blocks of the performance area up and down, constantly shifting the contours and location of the performance space along with the plot. They also put the gantry above the stage to good use, with the fairy folk doing impressive acrobatics in silk slings and beds levitate.

Reviews of this production have been decidedly mixed, with some Shakespeare purists saying the Oberon/Titania switch didn't work, that the interpretation overdoes the comedy and eclipses some of Shakespeare's poetry, and that an excessive (and unscripted) distribution of love potion forces a gender-bending hilarity in line with Pride Month but distracting from the plot.

I'd ignore them all. This Midsummer is fun. Too many people think Shakespeare is about stuffy classics to be endured rather than enjoyed. Something only the highly educated can appreciate. What BS. Shakespeare was a man of the people who played to the masses. A Midsummer Night's Dream is one of the best examples of that. I think the The Bard would have loved this production, and would have been the centre of the party as the post-production dancing kicked off.

No resting on laurels: Longborough kicks off a new Ring

Back in its early days, when Longborough Festival Opera announced their plans to produce a full Ring Cycle, anyone who could be bothered to pay attention laughed. Putting on Wagner's binge-watching extravaganza of four giant operas ... all needing big voices, a huge orchestra and exceptional skill ... is a challenge for the world's greatest opera companies. The idea of Wagner at English country house opera was comic; surely The Ring would be impossible for a young company operating on a shoestring in a 500-seat renovated chicken shed.

By 2013, laughter had turned to admiration as Longborough produced a much-acclaimed Ring Cycle. They are now officially "on the map", not just for country house opera but for a fanatical sub-culture of Wagner aficionados who travel around the world to see the canon. Over the years I've become used to sitting near Germans who've flown in for the production, or people telling me that they'd seen this in Bayreuth and the Longborough production is much better.

So you'd think that after their enormous triumph, Longborough might take it easy for a while. Work through all of Wagner's other operas. Maybe put on revivals of their acclaimed Ring elements. Nope. Starting this year, they're doing it all from scratch. New teams, new interpretations, building to a new Ring Cycle in 2023.

When I first heard the news I was a disappointed. There are Wagner works Longborough has yet to put on, and that I haven't seen on stage. Why not go for those? It seemed too soon for repetition. Last night, Das Rheingold convinced me I'm wrong.

This is the one element of The Ring I hadn't yet seen, I confess, so it was fresh territory for me anyway. But this first installment of the remake shows that, filled with a new confidence and learning lessons from the first time through, Longborough's ambition is to better its own success. They're likely to succeed.

The most noticeable improvement is in production values. With its small performance space, limited budgets and lack of any real backstage, Longborough will always be constrained. Their first Ring Cycle had an austere industrial chic, at times almost a bare stage. This time around we have much more to look at. An ascending circle of rocks with a backdrop of video effects gave us a convincing watery grotto for the Rhine maidens, then expanded into multiple levels with sinister red light later to conjure Alberich's grim mines. Video and lighting continue throughout to expand the universe beyond the small space. Costuming also has a lot more visual interest, especially the Rhine maidens' sinuous silver gowns that are part mermaid, part flapper. Overall, the style is Victorian Steampunk ... something we've seen work before at Longborough, most notably in Alcina. It's still a long way from my fantasy of Peter Jackson (of Lord of the Rings fame) art directing The Ring, but it works.

Music and voices are a given at Longborough and they delivered as usual. Anthony Negus remains at the helm of the orchestra, playing a score that isn't as memorable as the other three installments of The Ring but still has plenty of sweeping drama and poignant beauty. I was particularly impressed with Mark Stone's Alberich, whose powerful voice took us on a delicious descent into greed and depravity, and Pauls Putnins as the giant Fasolt, maybe the only truly good guy in the piece and therefore destined to die for love. The greatest delight was Mark Le Brocq's Loge (aka Loki).

Wagner's all about big and bold, deep and rich. He doesn't give us much by way of light, cheerful tenors. (Probably the biggest difference from Italian opera.) Le Brocq's crystalline notes are like sunshine cutting through the gloom. Even his costume brings a lighter tone: a bright red frock coat against everyone else's dark colours. And his character is a delight. Loge's machinations drive the plot, maintain interest and, at times, offer welcome comic relief ... something I've never seen in a Wagner opera. He is Das Rheingold's Tyrion Lannister. Why the composer didn't carry him through as a major character in the other operas is a mystery. They would have been much improved by his presence.

Such an opinion, of course, would be heresy to many in the audience. In the 10 seasons since we discovered Longborough I've seen enough Wagner to put me in a very small subset of humanity. I've come to appreciate the genius of the works, but I confess (shock! horror!) that I have still never managed to make it through a full performance without a short nap. We may now officially be on the opera's Patron list, but I'm a cretin compared to most of the people who make the pilgrimage here. The Ring started as a way to woo my husband-to-be, and it's grown on me. I like to think that my relationship and Longborough's productions are both getting better as the years go by.

Surprise! Ventnor's a culinary hotspot on the Isle of Wight

Given the Isle of Wight's "stuck in the past" reputation, the one thing we weren't expecting was much of a food scene. I was braced for a week of old-style pub fare, from the era before anyone outside of the medical field used "gastro" as a prefix. How delighted I was to be proven wrong. Ventnor and surrounds can deliver on the pub, chippie and tea room traditions, if that's what you're after, but it also has an interesting range of options for people with more adventurous tastes.


FOR ROMANTIC FRANCOPHILES Our evening at Le Tour du Monde was my favourite of the trip. This small restaurant is only six months old and very much a labour of love from a couple who've decided to change careers and channel years of travel and adventurous dining into a new business. She works front of house while he cooks. The results are fine dining quality with the atmosphere of an elegant yet informal French bistro. They're in a striking building in the centre of town that reminds me of French colonial facades in New Orleans. Bay windows look over a high street that grows remarkably quiet at night. The interior is an eclectic mix of artwork, crisp white linens, crystal and silver, yet despite the formal trappings it never took on the stuffiness that let down the Royal Hotel (described below). Mid-century jazz and crooner classics play softly in the background. Diners seemed to be skewed more towards locals than tourists. (Indeed, this is the kind of "local" I keep hoping one of our neighbourhood pubs will morph into.)

The menu is mostly classical French and Italian, though influences creep in from around the world. Salt and chili calamari sit beside a classic duck salad. Vegetable tempura or beef carpaccio? Mains take advantage of the island's rich larder, with local beef and lamb sharing pride of place with fresh seafood. We were tempted by duck breast with pepper sauce and a melange of sea bass, scallop and king prawns, but ... probably because we'd been commenting on how fine the cows looked in their verdant fields earlier that afternoon ... we both opted for local fillet. I started with the lobster bisque while my husband went for the prawn and smoked salmon salad, an elegant update on the classic prawn cocktail. All was cooked to perfection, not always assured when your husband prefers "bleu". There was a fine balance of flavours on sauces and seasoning. Accompanied by choices from a thoughtfully compiled and surprisingly diverse wine list. We ended by sharing a cafe gourmand, that magnificent French innovation for the greedy dessert lover who can never settle on just one thing. If you judge a French restaurant on the quality of its crème brûlée (as some people do), then you'll be happy here.

FOR ON-TREND LONDONERS With a minimalist interior of pale woods and house plants, a chalkboard of unique cocktails, a bustling young staff and a heavily Japanese-influenced menu that mashes the expected up with the new (soft shell crab "sliders" in squid ink bao buns, anyone?), Smoking Lobster feels like it should be in Shoreditch or Bermondsey. It's quite a surprise to find it on

the Ventnor sea front, rather unfortunately positioned next to a derelict amusement arcade. A good look inside at the innovative daily specials tells you this is not your standard British seaside chippie. Indeed, this was the only restaurant I overheard tourists talking about in other locations during our visit. Those sliders seem to be on their way to fame.

We discovered this place for lunch. A beguiling range of starters makes it ideal for mid-day, tapas-style grazing. A king prawn uramaki dragon roll ... beautifully prepared so the head and tail brought the "dragon" to life, beef tataki with deep-fried beef bon bons and salt & pepper squid were fantastic. And the sliders? Unctuous buns, the touch of ink giving them a hint of umami, pillowing the crunch of tiny soft shell crabs packed with crustacean flavour (rather than the usual dominance of deep-fried coating). No wonder people were talking about them. We booked immediately to return for a dinner later in the week. To the already sampled starters we added a delicious mixed ceviche of seared scallops, yellow fin tuna and yuzu. My Asian-spiced pork belly with accompanying spring rolls was a wonder, but my husband's steak was the one disappointment of our two visits. The fillet at Tour du Monde was better. If you're going to come here, don't bother with the traditional.

FOR MARPLE AND POIROT FANS We thought we'd splash out for a more upscale dinner at The Royal Hotel. I had stayed there when I visited the island in 1989 and was curious to see how it had changed. We were intrigued to learn that it's one of only 30 restaurants listed in all the Michelins (currently with a "plate", not a star) since the Guide's inception. It also benefited from being almost directly across the street from our hotel. With every other dining option requiring a fairly strenuous walk or climb, I think my husband wanted a night off.

They get points for effort. The food is tasty and well presented, the dining room grand and elegant. But it all had an aura of trying too hard. This was actually the time I felt most acutely that the island was living up to its "trapped in the past" reputation. Though the hotel had certainly moved on from my visit, when it was all faded grandeur and good value for money. Now the rooms are £300+ per night (there's a reason we stayed across the street), the lobby gleams with marble and a man in a white DJ plays classics on a baby grand. The dining room appears to have been redecorated recently, but the style ... with its striped wallpapers, grand curtains and old masters art reproductions ...  is solidly fin de siècle. It feels like you've fallen into an Agatha Christie mystery set in Cannes. The menu, however, feels like London five or 10 years ago. Remember when everything was built up from a precise rectangle down the middle of the plate, with a paint brush of sauce beneath? Remember when every meal seemed to have beetroot and whipped goat's cheese?

We have no regrets about ordering the tasting menu with matching wine and champagne flight, and found its £82 price tag good value compared to similar on the mainland. (I'd expect to pay around £120 for similar anywhere in the orbit of London.) But we were surprised at the almost Fawlty Towers reverence we got once we ordered, as if nobody ever really went in for the tasting menu. The beetroot was preceded by a creamy soup and followed by cured salmon and a dish of pork three ways before a palate-cleansing parfait, a cheese plate and a rhubarb crumble souffle that was delicious. The last was probably the dish of the night, but took far too long to arrive at the table. Service was fantastically genial but not terribly informed. Nobody could tell us much about what was on our plates beyond the name of the dish, and we flummoxed not one but two waitstaff with the not-unusual question of what order they recommended we eat our cheese in. But most irritating was uneven pacing of the courses with vast gaps between a few that meant we finished much of our promptly-poured wine pairing before the food ever turned up. (A good sommelier would have been coordinating with the kitchen, or topping up when the delay got excessive.)

If you're feeling celebratory and want the multi-course pomp, it's a bit of a giggle at a decent price point, and the wine pairings are surprisingly good. But on pure quality of food I'd go to either of the restaurants above first.

FOR A TWEE TEA After moving to England, I was somewhat distressed to learn that the English dismissed much of what I had treasured while sightseeing as twee: excessively or affectedly quaint, pretty, or sentimental. Well, sorry ... we can all use a bit of childhood-channeling, fairy-believing, pastel-coloured twee in our lives sometimes. The Old Thatch Tea Shop in Shanklin Old Village is the place to find it. It's no accident "old" appears in that description twice. It's the whole point. I don't think this place has changed at all since I visited 30 years ago. The tough-but-kind, white-haired ladies running it even look the same. Maybe they're Westworld-style robots.


There's a thatched roof. Lace doilies. Shelves of novelty tea pots and miniature British cottages. Roses twine on china. The garden is infested with fairy figurines. There's a lot of pink. They also serve a damned fine tea. Sometimes, tradition is beloved for a reason. Three tiers of goodies. Loose leaf tea in a proper pot. Lovingly cut sandwiches generously filled with fresh ingredients. Light and moreish Victoria sponge. Fluffy scones with clotted cream and home made jam. Of course, the first time I was here, there was no Englishman raising his eyebrow at my "incorrect" sequencing of the toppings on the scone. You can call me an ignorant American, and I'll just keep putting the cream on first, thank you.

FOR PROPER PUBBAGE If there was only a coral reef off shore, the Spyglass Inn would pretty much be my perfect seaside pub. Inside, a warren of cozy, nautically-themed rooms. A venerable old bar that serves a range of modern brews and alcohols that belies its darkened wood. (The local Mermaid Gin has a pop-up party space on site.) Two levels of terraces wrap around the building, offering outdoor seating hanging over much of the southwest edge of the bay with views down a long stretch of sand. Dogs are allowed. Jolly Rogers fly from flagpoles and a few novelty pirate statues offer classic beach holiday photo opportunities. We ate here once. Burgers perfectly respectable, clearly mass-produced patties bought in bulk, with a pile of tasty chips too big for most appetites to finish. It's what I was expecting on the Isle of Wight, and had we not discovered better options we could have been content here every night, working our way through pies, curries and fish and chips.

But the food isn't the point. This is a place for drinking a pint in the sun while listening to the waves and dreaming of a a lottery win that allows you to spend the rest of your life circumnavigating the globe (or maybe just the Caribbean) in a luxury sailing yacht. Of course, you'd turn up on the Isle of Wight for Cowes. The Spyglass accommodates that daydreaming admirably.

Osborne House, Ventnor Botanic Garden are my IOW must-sees

If you're only going to indulge in one bit of sightseeing on the Isle of Wight, make it Osborne House. Its history, size and sheer magnificence leaves everything else on the island in its wake. If you're a fan of the British royal family and their palaces, it justifies a trip to the island just to see it.

No other British royal palace gives you such an intimate, personal connection to its builders. Most layer the tastes and additions of successive generations. The Royal Pavilion at Brighton gets very close to the mind of George IV, but this is even better. George outsourced his desires to others to make real, and spent a relatively brief time living in the result. Victoria and Albert were personally involved with every aspect of Osborne from the foundations up and used this as a beloved family home for decades.

Most of the building is Albert's design, brought to life by London builder Thomas Cubitt. The royal couple took painstaking care with the interiors, many of the prized pieces being birthday or Christmas presents they gave to each other over the years. Little has changed since Victoria died, though almost everything has been beautifully restored over the past 30 years. (The palace was grand, but precariously shabby, when I first visited in the late '80s.)

It's the combination of intimacy and grandeur that makes Osborne worth visiting, but do brace yourself for the price. Unless you're an English Heritage member, adults are £18.50 each. I think it's worth it.

Though it seems impossibly grand to modern eyes, this was meant to be an intimate family home for The Queen, Prince Consort a growing brood of children that eventually numbered nine. If you're familiar with London's Pimlico or Belgravia, both packed with Cubitt buildings (and a very fine gastropub named after him), this is actually easy to see. Osborne is an over-sized Italianate villa of the same type the affluent upper middle classes were building for themselves in London. Vast servants’ quarters in the basement and at the back, practical working rooms on the ground floor, grand entertainment spaces on the first, grown up bedrooms on the second and the children tucked away in a nursery right out of Mary Poppins or Peter Pan up top.

To contemporary eyes it would have been bold and modern. Albert turned his back on the "safe" style of Roman neo-classicism to embrace an eclectic mix of Greek revival and Italian Renaissance. The interiors are vividly colourful and barely a square inch is left undecorated. If your personal tastes veer towards Scandi minimalism, this place may make you a bit queasy.

Furnishings and a vast array of collectibles show off the couples' love of history and high culture: bronzes and marbles reproduce the most famous works of antiquity; paintings show significant events from the past; micro-mosaics, glass and porcelain celebrate the best modern workmanship. There's a stunning Venetian glass chandelier here that looks like a flower garden has exploded into a mushroom cloud in the centre of the room. Ironically, the surroundings are so lavishly decorated that it just fades in.

It's not all high culture, however. Victoria's watercolours from the couple's travels hang next to old masters; the equivalent of holiday snaps. Paintings of peasants and everyday genre scenes balance the worthy subjects. One of my favourites is an Italian peasant girl, more striking in her natural beauty than all the portraits of queens and princesses.

The modernity included electricity, some of England’s earliest flushing toilets and plumbed baths, and a clever “U” shaped dining, lounging and billiards suite which anticipates today’s passion for open plan living. There was an important reason for the last, however. In this innovatively-shaped room, the court could still technically be in attendance on the queen while being out of her sight and hearing, giving Victoria some rare privacy.

The tour includes the family's private apartments, where their personalities are revealed even more. Albert's room carries on the German tradition of the kunstkammer, the cabinet of curiousities in which items from the natural world, antiquities, religious memorabilia and small works of art mixed to show off the owner's "Renaissance Man" credentials. Victoria's private space is both more feminine and more religious, but that also no doubt reflects the fact that she lived to into her 80s, whilst Albert's rooms were frozen in time after his death at just 42. Victoria died here, with a painting of Albert on his funeral bier above her. Macabre but touching. The office they shared between their private rooms is particularly revealing, packed with all the bits and pieces they loved the most. Nothing banishes the idea of Victoria as a prude faster than the enormous and titillating painting of a group of lovely ladies in various stages of undress at their bath that hangs directly across from the desks. It was a birthday present from Victoria to Albert.

All of these rooms, and the nurseries above, overlook a rolling green landscape that gently falls towards Osborne Beach and the Solent. The scene reminded Albert of the Bay of Naples. That seems a bit of a stretch, particularly as the modern view is dominated by the cluster of Portsmouth's towers across the water, but on a sunny day it's still glorious to see scores of sails skidding across the Solent's almost-Mediterranean blue.

Victoria continued to use Osborne regularly in the four decades after Albert's death, with just one major change. As India's importance grew and she was named its empress, Victoria became increasingly entranced with the sub-continent. She added an Indian-inspired wing to reflect her fascination, dominated by the astonishing Durbar room. This enormous space drips with ornate plasterwork and outrageous decorative detail. It's the architectural equivalent of Chicken Tikka Masala; something that's supposed to be Indian but is actually terribly English. The hallways leading to it are full of beautiful portraits of Victoria's Indian subjects, from jewel-bedecked maharajas to humble labourers. They're almost as fascinating as the remarkable room beyond.

Osborne is surrounded by an enormous estate full of gardens, woodlands, views and walking paths, almost all accessible with dogs. (They’re not, of course, allowed in the house, but there are a decent number of shady parking spots so you can leave them in a well-ventilated car.) You can easily spend a full day here and many people come with picnics to enjoy the remarkable views. The seriously horticulturally-minded, however, should head to the other side of the island to get their garden fix.

The Ventnor Botanical Garden is nestled in the southern edge of the Undercliff, a geological feature of the Isle of Wight that creates a micro-climate that is, on average, drier and 5 degrees (C) warmer than the surrounding area. The result: semi-tropical gardening conditions typical of the Mediterranean. The courtyards, paths and long borders at the heart of this garden remind me more of the Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild on the Côte d'Azur than anything I've seen in England. And I'm guessing that my visit in late May put me there at the garden's peak, with roses, iris and many other flowers in glorious bloom and towering spikes of blue Echium (aka bugloss) making bold architectural statements.

Ventor really gets unique, however, when its inspiration leaves this continent. A South African garden spills down sunny terraces to show off the treasure trove we get from that country. It's a crazy, glorious patchwork of colour. These are plants mostly grown in the UK as annuals but I suspect that here, as in South Africa, they're perennials.

Further down the path comes Australia, where the plants get more exotic and eucalyptus trees frame a beguilingly foreign scene with their ghostly, striped bark. There's a forest of tree ferns and a re-creation of one of the rocks in the outback with ancient, native paintings.

Someone has clearly put a lot of money into this garden recently. You enter through a beautiful, modern facility cut into the hillside with shops, educational spaces and restaurants. The garden advertises two places to eat … a cafe on the top level, with an enormous deck overlooking the gardens below, and a "proper" restaurant called Edulis on the formal patio with pond two stories below … and it was obvious on my visit that tourists were coming just for the dining opportunities.

If only their staffing was equal to their facilities. I visited on a Saturday, at the end of a week of school holidays. Presumably peak time. Yet only the cafe was open, and there appeared to be just three people staffing the whole garden. They'd all shifted onto cafe duty, leaving nobody to sell tickets, plants or a range of lovely housewares in the shop. Even with all those hands to the kitchen pumps, a sizeable crowd was waiting more than 20 minutes to buy coffee or a sandwich. There's enormous potential here for an upscale tourist destination on top of a great garden, but management will need to improve to make it so.

The Ventnor Botanical Garden isn't affiliated with any other institution, so neither English Heritage, Royal Horticultural Society or National Trust cards will help you here. Admission, if you can find someone to pay, is £9.50. I wish I’d realised in advance that they allow dogs on leads, buying your ticket online reduces the price by a pound and the ticket allows a return visit within a week. All of which would have encouraged me to discover this garden near the beginning of our trip, had I only known. I leave you, dear reader, to take advantage of my discovery.

The Isle of Wight: Staycation that's 1/2 Cote d'Azur, 1/2 time travel

When I first started working in the UK, I was amazed to discover that none of my colleagues ever
went on holiday in their own country. Any time they had more than a long weekend, they were on a plane to France, Spain, Italy ...  anywhere with a better chance of sun. I, in love with every inch of my new land, just couldn't believe how little most people had visited of their home turf.

More than 25 years later, I have become them. Sure, I still do more sightseeing on the home front than the average Brit, but my husband and I have never done more than a long weekend on British soil. Until now. We hadn't planned any holidays until September, but the first half of the year has been filled with unexpected challenges and we needed a week of downtime to recover. We also needed to keep the budget in check and didn't have the energy to go far. The answer? The Isle of Wight.

The diamond-shaped island nestles against the South Coast of England facing the historic port of Portsmouth. We can go from home to the ferry in under an hour, then it's a 40-minute crossing. It's just two miles across the Solent at its narrowest point, but tides and traffic flow demand a longer V-shaped route. Brace yourself for pricey fares, and check with hotels who can often get you deals of half price or more. Locals boast that it's the most expensive ferry crossing-by-distance over any water in the world. I'm convinced they do this to discourage day-trippers and other "inappropriate" visitors. (The ridiculously expensive toll bridge to Sanibel Island, Florida comes to mind.)

It's a relatively tiny place. At just 148 square miles, you could fit more than four Isles of Wight inside the greater London area encircled by the M25. Being so close and well-connected to the mainland, you'd expect it to be much the same as the rest of Hampshire. But the Isle of Wight is gloriously different.

Many people describe it as Britain stuck in a time warp, circa 1950. It's not quite as antiquated as all that. I saw a handful of new housing estates and schools, there are a few grocery superstores and the main town of Newport has a shopping mall and plenty of modern brands. We discovered a handful of great restaurants, including one "on trend" enough to fit smoothly into London.

But most of the island is, undeniably, a throwback. Shops and restaurants are locally owned and one-of-a kind. I can't remember the last time I walked down a high street that was almost entirely filled with one-off establishments. Here, it's the norm. People talk to each other. Service is fantastically genial, though often a bit unsophisticated. Thatched cottages abound. Quaint tea shops do a thriving business. Souvenir shops sell the same tourist tat I saw in their windows on my first visit here 30 years ago. Given how badly the boxes of the Lilliput Lane miniature cottages had faded in one window, they might have been the same items. There are an enormous number of retirees on the island (one suspects most of the permanent population has pushed past 50) but the number of families on holiday with young children ... presumably trying to give them a taste of a sweeter, simpler childhood ... brings down the averages.

The overwhelming vibe on the island is late 19th century, thanks to its popularity with Queen Victoria. She and Albert built their family retreat here, she visited regularly throughout her widowhood and eventually died here. The architecture is heavily from that era, including town-scapes of Victorian row houses that could be in London and plenty of Arts and Crafts suburban villas with gingerbread details. But perhaps even more significant to the island's future was the endorsement of the queen's doctor, who proclaimed sea bathing a cure for a range of illnesses and said this was the place to do it.

While Victoria was settled in at Osborne House, closest to the mainland, the good doctor recommended the southeast shore. It became so fashionable that even the Empress of Austria came on holiday.

Here, a cataclysmic landslide near the end of the last ice age created a long shelf of coastline underneath a towering ridge of chalk. This "Undercliff", about five miles from Bonchurch to Niton, is essentially a giant sun trap creating a unique micro climate. It is, on average, 5 degrees celsius warmer here than the rest of southern England. The weather, the gardens and the architecture that followed all have a faint whiff of the Côte d'Azur, as if someone had awarded Cannes a "do over" and put it in the hands of sensible, unpretentious English people sworn to give you good value for money.

For an island you can circumnavigate in a few hours there is, however, a remarkable variety. Cowes, beloved of the yachting fraternity, is a bustling and affluent place full of trendy shops and restaurants and a vast range of places to drink. And, on any fine summer's evening, a vast number of drunken sailors. From Fishbourne to Shanklin, towns run around the eastern point of the diamond in a surprisingly charmless and almost continuous urban sprawl; neither the affluence of the Undercliff nor the sailing fraternity has reached here. The seafront areas look a bit down-at-heel and, were it not for the occasional, glorious views of the English Channel, you could be in any drab, hardscrabble bit of outer London. This part reminds you of the decline that most English seaside towns have faced since cheap airfares took their customers to the continent.

Yet on Shanklin's southern edge you'll find the old village, a cluster of pastel-painted thatched cottages in a wooded dell that is a hugely photogenic. It's a Disney fairy tale version of ye olde England and a must for any island visitor. Ventnor and St. Lawrence, just beyond, have obviously seen a recent influx of cash for building restoration and you sense that tourists are now sharing the space with a lot of affluent retirees.

The southwest coast of the IoW is almost entirely free of habitation, thanks to a vast track of National Trust ownership and protected wildlife areas, making an idyllic landscape for hiking or lounging. The National Trust car park at Compton Bay is the starting point for exploring this coast, which includes one of England's best sandy beaches nestled beneath orange cliffs that fade to white chalk as they turn and stretch to the island's western corner. The downlands there rise and fall to The Needles, a series of white chalk pinnacles rising from the channel (top photo). There used to be more of them, and they used to be higher, but chalk erodes. They're still an awesome sight, easily visible from the car park at The Needles amusement park if you don't fancy a long hike. (Top tip: arrive in the late afternoon and they no longer charge for parking.)

Inland, the landscape and mood changes once again. It's almost entirely agricultural, with rolling fields, forested hills and bosky dells inhabited by tiny, ancient villages. There's little Victorian incursion here; many farm houses look like they've been standing since King Charles I was held captive in nearby Carisbrooke Castle. Every village seems to have a sprinkling of late 20th century bungalows as well, but usually they're well enough dispersed and have nice enough gardens to blend in. It's all reminiscent of deepest, darkest Dorset, just over the water to the northwest. Placid cows and sheep decorate the landscape, but they decorate plates, too. Local meat is on most menus, as is the well-known produce of the island's garlic farm.

There are two vineyards and one distillery making the most of the island's bounty. Adgestone's wines are slightly better, and their gardens with views of vines and the distant sea are designed for lazy afternoons of drinking the product on site. But the team at the older Rosemary Vineyards is a friendlier bunch with a bigger shop offering a whole range of IoW delicacies. They're the same people behind Mermaid Gin. The distillery used to be in the vineyard but has now moved to its own place. Of all we tasted, it was the gin that proved most worthy of bringing home ... particularly the pink version produced with a subtle infusion of fresh strawberries. (Though we did buy a few bottles of Adgestone's blackberry and lavender country wine for summer spritzers.)

The pastoral inclination of the island and its appeal to walking holidays make for one of the most dog-friendly places I've ever visited in the UK. Your furry friends are welcome at almost all hotels and pubs and some restaurants. You can even bring them inside the Ventnor Botanical Garden. And, obviously, all those miles of coastal paths are a doggie delight.

Accommodation, however, can be surprisingly tricky. The rental cottage market was sparse compared to other top destinations. Most of the properties I liked weren't in walking distance to dining options, while the ones that were conveniently located lacked charm. So I switched to hotels and B&Bs. You really feel the "lost in time" mood here; boutique hotels and hip little B&Bs are few, old-style places with stolid, golden oak furniture and big florals abound. Most web sites show photos of interiors that look like they haven't been updated since the 1980s. When you do stumble on the rare property that looks modernised, it's stupidly expensive. (The good news is that the island overall offers one of the cheapest holiday options in the south of England, with most rooms under £100 a night.)

Once on the island, I saw a lot of places that hadn't showed up on my internet searches, then looked them up to find rudimentary web sites. My hunch: most places here are run by older people for whom social media, web design and search engine optimisation are alien concepts. There's vast potential here for someone with a modernising touch.

We ended up at the Eversley, a family-run hotel on the western edge of Ventnor next to its Victorian park and a  10- to 15-minute stroll to the waterfront with pubs, restaurants and promenades. The less fit should be warned that, according to my FitBit, the short walk includes an incline the equivalent of nine flights of stairs. But that's reality on the IoW. It's hilly. To the west of the town's bay, the Undercliff plunges to a deep valley, which rises to another hill, which then falls off in cliffs down to the water. The Eversley and the park sit in this deep valley. The hotel has its back to the seaward hillside, with gardens spilling down the slope, a pool at the bottom, and a path up to a private hilltop lawn with expansive views of the channel and a gate out onto the coastal path.

We upgraded to a superior room (No. 17), which definitely felt like someone had recently gone to the effort to get a boutique hotel look. The bathroom featured sleek tiles and an enormous claw-footed tub. The bedroom had a leather sofa, coffee table and large-screen TV for lounging, as well as a super-king bed. The room's real glory, however, was its huge windows looking across the valley to the Undercliff, and the towering Victorian ceilings. It was also tremendously convenient for the dogs, with quick access down a short hallway to a back yard and the upper reaches of the garden.

The Eversley is a quirky place that doesn't completely escape the IoW's "lost in time" negatives. The first thing you see upon arrival is a wheelchair in the front lobby. It never moved during our stay, but its prominent placement made the entry feel more like an old folk's home than a hotel. A feeling reinforced by vast expanses of anaglypta wallpaper, pub-pattered carpets in the public spaces and a lot of grey-haired guests. It also felt strangely empty. We only ever saw enough people to fill perhaps six other rooms, though there are almost 30 in the hotel. Several large and gracious reception rooms on the ground floor have almost no furniture and stand unused. Though they advertise a restaurant, it doesn't seem to be in operation. When we were too tired to go out on our first night, however, the hotel manager rustled up two tuna sandwiches for us to take to our room with a bottle of white wine. It's a lovely place with a deeply personal touch that I'd happily recommend ... just don't expect a modern boutique hotel.

Once you're settled in to Ventnor you'll find a surprisingly good restaurant scene and some fabulous things to do. I'll write about those in my next articles.

Royals, semi-shade and after hours access: Chelsea 2019 highlights

The BBC's official coverage was buzzing with discussions on the year of recycling, the predominance of green and the arrival of the first-ever judged show garden inside the floral marquee. But on the ground at the Chelsea Flower Show this year there was only one topic on everyone's lips: The Duchess of Sussex's garden.

It was not, to be accurate, the Duchess' garden, but rather the RHS' "Back to Nature" garden, designed by Chelsea veterans Adam White and Andree Davies, with royal input. But that didn't matter. To the fans queueing to see it (we waited 45 minutes, at times the wait was reportedly as long as 2 hours) or overheard talking about it, it was "the Duchess' garden" or "the royal garden". Was it worth the wait?

For me, and for most people I overheard: yes. It wasn't my favourite garden of the year, nor did it hold the best plants, but it connected on an emotional level the way few other gardens could. In my case, that's probably because I grew up playing in woodland. The tree swing, the woodland den, the fallen logs and the creek lined with shade-loving plants took me back to the forest in which I spent long childhood summers back in Chesterfield, Missouri. The tree house encrusted with branches to make it look like a bird's next was a particularly fabulous flight of fancy. The garden was also noteworthy for being a space the public can walk through, rather than the usual show garden that you view from the outer edges. Usually, only the media, sponsors and their guests get to walk inside the displays; I expect people would have queued for ages for the privilege even if nobody famous had been involved.

Here are some other highlights.

• The media have proclaimed this "the year of green" because of the amount of foliage on show. The story is more complex. I would have called it the year of the semi-shade garden. Shade, of course, isn't conducive to showy blooms. We saw a lot of impressive trees, spreading their cover over ferns, hostas, astrantias, foxgloves, heucheras and primrose.

• There was still plenty of colour. It was a year of traditional English palettes: gentle blues, purples and pinks contrasted with the occasional pop of yellow or white.

• Every year there seems to be one plant that pops up in profusion across multiple show gardens. This year it was Trollius, aka Globeflower. 

• My favourite garden, and the judges', was the Andy Sturgeon-designed M&G Investments Garden (below). Presumably, when you're the main sponsor of the whole show you can out-gun everyone else on your investment. Certainly, no expense had been spared here as the builders turned a flat space into a forested slope, terraced with massive oak sculptures that had been charred to a deep black. The way the plants and flowers "popped" against that inky background was extraordinary.

• There were fewer jaw-dropping, how-the-hell-did-they-do-that gardens than in previous years, but the Welcome to Yorkshire garden was extraordinary enough to carry that brief. It was an extraordinary feat of construction: a canal, complete with two ancient lock gates leaking in places, water at different levels and a lock-keepers cottage. There's always a debate on whether these things are gardens or stage sets. As impressively naturalistic as the grasses, weeds and plants growing out of seemingly-ancient crevasses in walls were, there wasn't much memorable here as far as flowers and plants go. But full marks, and a gold medal, for creating an illusion.

• Most years a sheik or sovereign wealth fund from the Arabian peninsula sponsors a main show garden for PR purposes. These work best when they bring a taste of the exotic. Dubai's entry this year did not. Aside from its painted earthen walls there wasn't much sense of place, and the planting ... while obviously draught tolerant ... was green and colourful enough to be European. It only dazzled at night, after most visitors have gone.
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• And what was I doing there at night? After more than 20 years of attending Chelsea, I finally scored tickets to some after-hours corporate hospitality. This is the invisible engine that keeps the show going. Corporations (some charities and the rare individual) pay to sponsor the gardens, and can pay more to entertain guests in them for an additional 90 minutes after the public must leave at 8pm. (Though your hospitality tickets let you in from 5:30.) The hour between 7:30 and 8:30 is magical, with unobstructed views and colours becoming more distinct in the twilight. The form is to use this time to see all you can, before turning up on the garden that invited you for drinks, canapés and a short talk from the designer responsible. Our host was the Family Monsters Garden, designed by Alistair Bayford and sponsored by Family Action, a charitable organisation celebrating 150 years of helping families in trouble. The garden was a birch grove, spiralling up a mound with an uneven path and boulders representing the issues all families face. Ultimately the garden leads to a space with benches and a quiet pool, where a family could gather to communicate and be together. This was a garden particularly suited for evening viewing, with the white birch trunks and spires of white foxglove standing out as the day's light faded.

• Almost as exciting as after-hours access was speaking to Kazuyuki Ishihara. The Japanese designer is the only example I can remember of an individual sponsoring his own garden, and he's come from Tokyo every year since 2004, winning 12 gold medals along the way. His trademark stones and boulders covered in moss turn up every year, inevitably with iris, babbling water features and fascinating trees. This year's "Green Switch" garden (below) was no exception, with a glass tea room pavilion on one side and a glass shower room on the other, both overlooking a tiny sylvan paradise. Mr. Ishihara often stands across the path from his garden, alone and un-noticed, as he watches people react. I spent a brief moment telling him how much his gardens inspire me every year and we shared a mutual bow.

• For the regular visitor, Chelsea's glory remains The Great Pavilion, where specialist growers and the nation's most prestigious nurseries come together to show off their wares. In a world where most garden centres are staffed by people who know little about what they sell, this is a chance to get all of your garden problems solved. I usually go with a list of questions, often accompanied by photos of specific issues. I emerged knowing that my geum is infested with whitefly, but cutting it back to the based and watering heavily will probably sort the issue and see the plant spring back from its roots. I understand why my passion flower vine isn't blooming, have the names of better allium varieties to intersperse in my hosta bed (Violet Beauty and Purple Rain) and have scouted out the perfect tulip to plant amongst my forget-me-nots next year (Louvre Orange).

• I emerged with three packets of sweet pea seeds, new gardening gloves and a £5 glass garden ornament. "I never worry about you and Chelsea," said my husband, inspecting my loot. "I know you can't by plants there. Hampton Court's the dangerous one." Quite right, my love. Brace yourself for the 5th of July.

Winchester, Kyoto and Tolkien combine for the perfect date night

Your sense of distance changes depending on your surroundings.

Growing up in St. Louis, pretty much every activity (including school) was half an hour away by car. Life was much the same in Dallas. Weekends regularly included two- or three-hour drives to local points of interest, and we thought nothing of a 300-mile weekend road trip to Chicago.

When I first started working in England, I brought that attitude with me. My first assignment came with a company car and a credit card for unlimited fuel. I used it. More than 500 miles a weekend wasn't unusual as I worked through every significant stately home, charming village, ruined abbey and dramatic landscape in reach.

More than 20 years on, and living permanently in the UK for 15, I've embraced a more British attitude. Infrastructure and expense are two culprits. Going anywhere in this country usually means sitting in traffic that will make the journey twice as long as it should be. Once you get there, parking will be hard to find, perilous to fit your car into and ridiculously expensive, and fuel is pricey. None of which, however, should deter me from weekend jaunts to our county town of Winchester, just 23 miles away.

Every time I go, I think to myself that I should go more. After this weekend, I'm making more of an effort to move our occasional "movie date nights" there. Winchester's Everyman Cinema is a marvellously sophisticated way to consume a film, and Kyoto Kitchen has been reviewed as one of the best Japanese restaurants in the country.

Each of the 28 Everyman cinemas in the UK is different, because they like to give new purpose to historic old buildings, but I think the ethos across all of them is the same. Intimate and sophisticated, they're more like some mogul's private screening room than a modern cinema. The manager gives a personal welcome and introduction to each film. Premium seats are oversized armchairs and sofas, and the lobby is a cocktail bar. They even deliver freshly-made pizzas to the seats. Clearly, this appeals to a rather niche target market: the pre-film advertising was for Sipsmith Gin, Hermes scarves and Green and Black chocolate. The only drawback is availability. With just two screens (in Winchester) rotating an handful of films, plus theatrical, operatic and ballet live broadcasts, you need to work to their schedule and booking in advance is usually a requirement.

We were there for Tolkien, the new biopic looking at how the youth of the master of epic literature shaped his writing. The difference between the mainstream reviewers' reactions (lukewarm to aggressively negative) and ours (highly positive) shows why I pay little attention to professional critics. I am clearly not their target market. Most of them griped about the film lacking daring or innovation, or how it was too pedestrian in its pacing. I saw an old-fashioned (in the best possible way) tale of love and friendship, and of dreams overcoming adversity. Set ... aside from the expectedly grim WW1 bits ... in a particularly easy-on-the-eye bit of English history. If you're a fan of Downton Abbey, or that elegiac twilight of British Empire, this film is for you.

The lush Arts and Crafts interiors, in fact, were almost a character in their own right. As well as I know that stylistic movement, and the tales of Middle Earth, I had never put two and two together.  Tolkien spent his childhood surrounded by a cultural zeitgeist that celebrated myth, legend and fairy tale. Of course that influenced his writing. If you know anything about the professor's life, the other influences ... the horrors of industrial Birmingham after a childhood in the countryside, the majesty of Wagner, the nightmare and loss of WWI ... won't be a surprise. But it's great to see them put together into a story both sad and joyous and, ultimately, inspiring.

Afterwards, it was a short walk through Winchester's picturesque Georgian and Victorian streets (Tolkien would have approved) to the Kyoto Kitchen.

This small (no more than 40 covers) restaurant in the repurposed ground floor of an Edwardian house in a row just off the high street was considered one of the best Japanese restaurants in the country by the late, great critic A.A. Gill. (I often quibbled with his film reviews, but almost never with his much-missed food writing.) It's also been awarded a plate in the Michelin-guide, one step below the star system. Kyoto Kitchen has, therefore, been on our "must do" list for years but, embarrassingly, we never managed to make it there. Now that we have, I suspect we'll be back soon.

The menu features a broad range of sushi, sashimi and tempura, plus main courses like grilled black cod, duck breast with raspberry teriyaki sauce and lamb chops with white miso. Thus you can assemble your meal as you wish: feast on raw fish, graze on a succession of small plates or assemble a more traditional European three courses. Since it was our first visit, we left ourselves in the kitchen's hands and went for the chef's menu. This featured a procession of nine exquisite plates, all shared between us, for the astonishing price of £34.95 per person. Here's another reason to love Winchester. I haven't seen a tasting menu in a Michelin-noted restaurant inside the M25 for any less than £70 in years. But even outside of London, we'd have been likely to spend as much at the functional, food-court style sushi place in our local mall. Kyoto Kitchen is a remarkable bargain.

We liked every dish, but thought some were particularly stellar. Tori Kara Agè combine the moreishness and comfort of chicken nuggets with gourmet spicing and light-touch frying. This is why panko bread crumbs exist. Their tempura is excellent, though don't dawdle. Every second it cools is a step away from perfection. In a world where sushi and sashimi have become commonplace lunch take-aways, this was a reminder of the vast differences you can find in fish. Itsu's boxes are excellent, but Kyoto Kitchen's sashimi was noticeably different: more delicate, yet at the same time more packed with flavour. We were less keen on the ume-shiso roll, where we thought the sea bass was overwhelmed by the shiso leaf and plum dust, but we appreciated the gourmet twist. Mochi ... glutinous rice parcels filled with azuki bean paste ... were far better than their description and opened my eyes to the fact that desserts may be my greatest leap into the unknown when we explore Japan later this year.

The restaurant decor says Japanese with a sparse elegance: light wooden floors, black ebony-style chairs, white tablecloths graced with an exquisite variety of pottery and kimonos and obi (wide belts) hanging on the walls. More essential to the properly Japanese experience is the staff. I've written before of the odd-but-typical experience of dining in London where the staff doesn't match the cuisine. Polish waitresses serving up Scandinavian, Australians presenting gourmet French, etc. While I don't have any problem with this, it certainly adds to the authenticity when the people taking care of you come from the same place as the recipes. Especially when your lead waitress takes the time to give you sightseeing tips from her home town and teach you some new Japanese words. We have now, usefully, mastered "oishī" with a big smile. That means "tasty". I suspect I'll be using it a lot when we reach Japan, and predict a few more practice sessions at Kyoto Kitchen in the mean time.

It is, after all, only 25 minutes away. And now, having scouted out exactly how far Kyoto Kitchen is from the train station ... just one stop past our own ... we can make the next trip by public transport, freeing us up for the matching 5-cup sake menu for an additional £20. Yes, that's right. A Michelin "plate" chef's menu, five courses with matching alcohol flight for less than £55. Londoners, eat your hearts out. Winchester is where it's at.