I don't very often leave the confines of Swindon, but I recently marked a significant birthday and my daughter treated me to a weekend in France to lessen the pain. We had a wonderful, if frenetic, two days courtesy of Newmarket Holidays and saw some amazing sights. We stayed at the Best Western, St Quentin, Maurepas, an adequate hotel where they were oddly very precious about how many croissants one ate at breakfast, and woe betide guests if you messed up the ticket system, as I managed to! Our first trip was to Monet's magnificent gardens at Giverny. Now, I hate to be a typical moaning Brit abroad, but really, the National Trust would do it so much better! Monet moved to the idyllic village of Giverny in 1883 where he began work on the garden that inspired him for more than 43 years. Ten years after moving in, Monet bought a neighbouring piece of land where he created his water gardens, inspired by the Japanese gardens he loved so much. Sadly today the gardens are separ...