Reservoir pond, fishing in Epte

If you live in the South East of England and feel at a loose end one weekend you could do far worse than hop on a ferry to France and drive down to Giverny. We did just that last weekend and had a great time.

You know how sometimes you just drop lucky with a place to stay? Well Gill booked a Bed & Breakfast that turned out to be quite a classy venue. It's an old hunting lodge just outside Vernon which is no more than a stone's throw away from Giverny.

Run by Helene and Laurent Daguet the Manoir de Notre Dame has been tastefully decorated throughout, pure House & Garden. The airy bedrooms have excellent en-suite showers and great beds, not those lumpy things you used to get in small French hotels. Helene, who speaks perfect English, was a great hostess and made us feel properly at home.

She also gave us the low down on two great eating places: La Gueulardiere, not far from the house, has some magnificent puddings, and the Restaurant Cote Marine a couple of miles up the road in Vernon also has a first rate menu. Prices are not over the top in either restaurant.

So why Giverny? Well the art lovers among you will know that the village was the home of the Impressionist painter, Claude Monet, from 1883 until his death in 1926. This is where he painted hundreds of studies and canvasses of his beloved lily pond.

Today it is open to the public and people flock here, mainly from Paris. Instead of the peace and tranquility that Monet would have known, his Japanese bridge is sagging daily under the weight of hundreds of visitors. It was so busy in the morning we went back just before closing time to get the unauthentically empty photograph you can see above.

I came across a new phenomenon - bridge hogging. Might I be forgiven for creating a scene from Reservoir Dogs in my mind's eye, with bodies blasted in slow motion from the bridge into a lily pond bathed in blood and gore? The things we imagine behind our smiles.

Monet's former studio has been converted in to a shop where you can buy Monet ties, T-shirts, vests, postcards, prints, books, scarves, jig-saws, cuff-links, watches, mugs, money boxes (Monet boxes?), fridge magnets, teddies, paperweights and seeded pot plants (presumably so you can grow your own Monet). I looked in vain for a Monet snowstorm.

Giverny is twee with some old houses, a hotel where Cezanne once stayed, and what looks like a medieval bus shelter. In the churchyard is Monet's tomb. Nearby is another grave topped by a Union Jack that contains the remains of the seven crew members of a Lancaster bomber that crashed near the village in 1944.

In the afternoon I took my fly rod and had a cast or two in the river Epte that Monet diverted to fill his pond. Apart from some tiny chub I couldn't entice anything substantial to the fly.

Wandering around Monet's house I took a photograph of his Japanese prints to audible gasps and tutting from the French people around me. No photography allowed apparently. Obviously they were unaware of the carnage at the bridge. Cue an axe-wielding Jack Nicholson recreating a scene from the Shining: "Heeeere's Johnny!" There is blood everywhere. But I digress.

It was my old art teacher, Bob Donald, who taught me to appreciate paintings and the history of art. He could have had us drawing and painting every lesson but he liked nothing better than to get out his projector and slides of various art works taking us through the history of art from cave painting to the present.

Of all the things I learned in school, his lessons probably had the most lasting impact. So the chance to see the very place that Monet worked on some of his greatest paintings was a treat indeed. Forget the other visitors (or Tarantino them). Giverny is a wonderful place.

More pics from the weekend, including the lily pond, here.