With award-winning sandy beaches, a good choice of places to stay and lots to do, Jeremy Gates finds the Isle of Wight a great place for a family holiday.

When Maritime Britain celebrations for the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar reach a climax on the waters of the Solent this summer, the Isle of Wight will offer a ringside seat.

If Nelson returns for his own party, I can picture him taking lunch at the yacht club in the trendy nautical village of Seaview - before lifting a telescope to his good eye for the procession of 150 ships from over 40 of the world's navies in The International Fleet Review off Spithead on June 28.

For that historic weekend, and throughout a summer dedicated to Britain's naval heritage, the six mile wide Solent estuary between Hampshire and the Isle of Wight will be at the heart of the SeaBritain 2005 campaign.

While Portsmouth bulges with tourists, cannier visitors might base themselves on the Isle of Wight - with its vast choice of guesthouses, hotels and holiday homes - and take day trips to the mainland for events which take their fancy.

If the crowds get too much, they can retreat to the quiet corners of an island which offers some of the best family holidays in Britain.

Queen Victoria had a similar idea when she turned her back on London life after the death of her adored husband Prince Albert and spent most of her reign at Osborne House, just outside Cowes.

A three-year multi-million pound restoration of the great house, gardens and grounds offers a fascinating glimpse of the grandeur of Royal life over a century ago and an impressive English Heritage restaurant on the terrace is a great way to conclude your visit on a scorching summer day.

Although Osborne is easily reached by bus, a car makes life much easier on the Isle of Wight. The lack of a motorway means drivers rarely drive fast, and traffic jams are only likely around the main town of Newport. Street lights are so rare that driving after dusk feels like a wartime blackout.

When the sun shines, everybody heads for the beach, particularly the major resorts of Sandown and Shanklin. Altogether, there are 13 blue flag beaches and Alum Chine, where a chairlift whisks you from clifftop to beach, offers a famous view of The Needles.

The long, sandy beach at Colwell Bay, West Wight's busiest resort, is a big hit with locals and visitors. Steephill Cove at Ventnor is a beach reminiscent of a 1950s postcard, its ramshackle wooden restaurant perched above the waves.

If the sun stays in, what's the choice for day trips? The island's fantastic cast of characters to entertain the youngsters includes dinosaurs, owls, bats, shire horses, falcons and even the donkeys who gamely turn the water wheel in ancient Carisbrooke Castle, where Charles I lingered before his execution.

Blackgang Chine, voted top tourist attraction on the island, has been described as ''a Disneyland designed by Enid Blyton''. It includes a water ride, full-sized cowboy town, concrete dinosaurs looming out of every hedge and a pirate's ship among the attractions.

Take a ride on the only London Underground train operating happily - and on time - miles from the capital. Island Line uses 60-year-old coaches on a marvellously scenic route from Ryde Esplanade to Shanklin, via Sandown and Brading for a day return ticket of just £3.80.

Get off at Brading, incidentally, and you have to wonder what the locals make of life. Slowly but surely, their small community appears to have been turned largely into ''a visitor experience'', complete with waxworks, torture chamber, factory outlet shop and - for a reason which escapes me - Sir Winston Churchill's last car.

Brading also has a £3m exhibition and visitor centre covering the remains of a superbly preserved third century Roman villa. If any child is struggling with a school project on the Romans, this stunning collection of mosaics, artefacts and interactive displays will surely trigger their interest.

With about 500 miles of footpaths criss-crossing the countryside, many salvaged from former railway tracks, walkers are in seventh heaven. Nearly 70 miles of paths, roads and tracks make up the Isle of Wight Coastal Footpath and it's easy to hire bicycles if you want to explore a bit more rapidly.

Although it's August before the armada of yachts gathers in Cowes Week, many surfers are impressed enough by beaches like Freshwater Bay, Compton Bay and Niton to skip their annual pilgrimage to Cornwall and Devon.

Although seven-night family holidays on the Isle of Wight start at little over £400, including ferry crossings, until late July, you can spend a similar amount on a weekend break in one of the grander hotels now that designer hotels and Michelin-starred restaurants have arrived on the island.

Our personal favourite - perhaps because it is such a stylish blending of ancient and modern - remains the Royal Hotel at Ventnor. The food and service are so good, that many of its guests treat themselves to regular visits as a booster when life on the UK mainland gets too much.

While the seagulls squawk overhead, the Royal offers panoramic views across Ventnor. It's possible to see a small town, in slow decline since its heyday in late Victorian England, on the cusp of a transformation in the next year or two. Affluent trendies, all too plainly, are moving in.

One batch of old terraced houses has been magically reborn as a five star designer hotel, and a tower block of apartments for second-home owners is climbing high above its wide sandy beach.

Next time we go, we might hardly recognise the place. But two breezy strolls along the shore will still take us out of Ventnor and happily back in time.

In one direction lies the splendid Ventnor Botanic Gardens, its plants and shrubs blooming so far ahead of the rest of southern England that the place must be touched by the magical warmth of Gulf Stream breezes.

In the other direction lies the tiny community of Bonchurch, little changed since it beguiled Charles Dickens and fellow writers in its heyday in the 1850s and 1860s.

Bonchurch includes a tiny parish church, an old-fashioned village store and post office, and now Pond Cafe, a restaurant grand enough to be visited by top food writers.

I found the place, by accident, on a breezy early morning jog along the shore. Only on the Isle of Wight, I fancy, could you stumble on anything so delightfully detached from the fads and fashions of modern day life.

TRAVELFACTS

* Jeremy Gates was a guest of Red Funnel Holidays which offers two nights half-board at The Royal Hotel in Ventnor from £182, including return ferries between Southampton and East Cowes.

* Red Funnel currently offers two night B&B breaks on the Isle of Wight from £63 per person at the Lyndhurst Hotel in Sandown, within walking distance of sandy beaches. All bedrooms ensuite with tea/coffee-making facilities and TV.

* Reservations: Red Funnel Holidays (0870 444 8890) or visit www.redfunnelholidays.co.uk

* General information: Isle of Wight Tourism (01983 813 800 or www.islandbreaks.co.uk).