Well folks, after many months of head scratching and wistful chin stroking I have worked out why some people still haven't visited the Isle of Wight. Brace yourselves. On paper, the Isle of Wight should be wiping the floor of destinations like Cornwall and Devon. For most of the UK, the Isle of Wight is easier to get to than Cornwall, which requires a 13 hour drive just to get from one end of the county to the other. Both have got lovely coastlines, but the Isle of Wight has a much better variety of beaches and you can see a dozen different beaches in a week without a great deal of effort.

OK, so I am a little biased, but I do think something is putting off visitors. Is it the ferry (see our guide for how to get the best price)? Is it the old fashioned view that the Isle of Wight is a bit tacky and outdated (bits of it are, but there are bucket loads of posh, quirky, interesting, modern places to stay and things to do)? 

Nope, the answer is in fact...doughnuts.

The Isle of Wight is missing out because it doesn't have one food item which is strongly associated with it. Yes, there are loads of places selling seafood and there is a place in Ventnor which does Crab on Chips, but it doesn't compare to the Cornish Pasty or the Devon Cream Tea in terms of recognition.

As an example, take the Melton Mowbray Pork Pie. The town of Melton Mowbray is pretty bland - just a selection of charity shops and a Wetherspoons (and an ex girlfriend which might explain my dislike for it) but people still cough up for the overpriced genuine pork pies from a shop in the town centre. 

Food culture can't just be created, but it can be developed from a series of old stories, rumours and traditions which may or may not be true. The Isle of Wight’s Grace's Bakery had a good go at looking into the question of whether the Isle of Wight actually invented the doughnut and concluded that (SPOILER ALERT) no-one knows for sure.

The key with this sort of thing isn’t to worry about the robustness of the story but to use phrases like ‘according to local legend’ which allow you to turn a vague story into a rich history. Devon and Cornwall are still arguing over who invented the pasty, but it hasn’t stopped it becoming a big industry.

If you visit Cornwall and don’t eat a pasty, you haven’t really done Cornwall. The Isle of Wight needs the same deal.

So here’s my plan:

1. Come up with a cutesy name. I currently favour “Granny Gertrude’s Original Isle of Wight Doughnuts” written in italic writing with a picture of a friendly looking grandma and a mixing bowl.
   
   
2. Create a vague back story based on the bits of information that are available. Something along the lines of: “According to local legend, the doughnut was invented on the Isle of Wight in 1845 - a few years before Queen Victoria moved to Osborne House. We don’t know whether her majesty loved to indulge in doughnuts, but we do know that we’ve spent years perfecting our secret combination of local ingredients to create the original and best Isle of Wight doughnut.”
   
   
3. Open up a ‘flagship’ Granny Gertrude’s Donuthut in Shanklin so I can send doughnut smells wafting down the Esplanade and hand out free samples to visitors.
   
   
4. Persuade every tea room, ice cream hut and touristy farm shops to stock my wonderful doughnuts

OK, I can smell a whiff of scepticism. Give it five years though and there’ll be a strong stench of doughnut coming from every corner of the Isle of Wight…maybe.

I could carry on to discuss our decent range of attractions, or the fact that the Isle of Wight is compact enough to get wherever you want within half an hour, or our pretty coastal path but I'll leave it there for now, and give the residents of Nottinghamshire time to fire an arrow at my house.

In a former life in journalism I would frequently have to show an interest in things that listeners were passionate about. It was usually dog poo, which biscuit is best for dunking or Princess Diana. A story combining two or three of those was gold.

I have a vague recollection of a story about geocaching but I never got around to working out what it was and kind of assumed it would require giving up weekends to spend my time in a field. 

I decided to give it a go after a visitor to this site got in touch and said that the Isle of Wight had plenty of geocache spots.

The general idea is pretty simple. You download an app which shows you where little boxes of treasure are hidden in your area,  and then try to find them when you have five minutes on a day out. You write your name in a log book and you can usually take a toy from the box and leave one behind if you want to. 

So, several weeks after downloading the app we finally got round to our first Isle of wight geocache. We had spent the morning at Appley's beach and seaside playground and spotted that there was a cache 400 metres from our current lunch spot. 

Obviously that doesn't sound far, but considering that it required an uphill walk across a park with a toddler I'd say we did well not to require survival assistance from Bear Grylls.

After passing the Goodleaf Tree climbing spot we found a path into woodland,  and then another path where a tupperware box was hidden inside a camouflage bag.

We dutifully signed the log book and our toddler helped herself to a toy car, which she exchanged for some toy we got free from Lidl. We also marked our success on the app.

And that was it. No great commitment or expense or hours spent in the rain in a field. Just a 10 minute detour and a new toy for our little one. 

By the way, Diana's favourite biscuit for dunking was a custard cream.