We visited the Monet garden at Giverny on our way to the south of France a few years ago. Monet did very very vivid colours – a joy to walk through – must have been difficult to live with. Maybe the present-day garden is more strongly coloured than it used to be in Monet’s day? It certainly is much busier – lots and lots and lots of tourists.

The water garden is more subdued. And so much visited in the mind that the reality comes as a sort of let-down. Like a book that one has hugely enjoyed and the subsequent movie that cannot but disappoint.