BREAKING NEWS: Monty Don confesses to ‘completely reckless decision’ with wife
TV presenter and garden designer Monty Don told Fearne Cotton how he’d been caught up in the romance at the time.
Monty recalled his first romantic break in Italy (Image: PA)
Given that Gardeners’ World favourite Monty Don is something of a seasoned traveller, it might come as a surprise to hear that he doesn’t much care for holidays. Monty who has presented a number of popular garden-themed travelogues such as Around the World in 80 Gardens and Monty Don’s Paradise Gardens, told Fearne Cotton on her Happy Place podcast: “I have never in my life thought about a holiday.”
He added: “That’s not to say I haven’t taken holidays, but I think if I was left to my own devices, I would never take a holiday.” By contrast, he says, his wife Sarah is a “great traveller,” and her globetrotting ways led Monty into what he now admits was a rather “reckless” decision. “When I met her, she had lived in New Guinea and she’d hitchhiked around Europe and, you know, done all that, whereas I’d barely been out of Basingstoke.”
Monty with Sarah Don, his wife of 43 years (Image: Jabphotography/REX/Shutterstock)
While Monty had briefly worked in France during his late teens, he says, “the first overseas holiday I ever went on, I was 26.” That was a trip to Venice with Sarah that was as memorable as it was expensive.
“We went to Venice for 10 days and blew a huge sum of money,” Monty recalled. “It was absolutely fantastic. I loved it. And I’ve been back many times since.”
That trip was in 1980, long before credit cards were commonplace and so, while they were in Venice, Monty and Sarah used travellers’ cheques for their day-to-day spending money. Until they ran out.
“We spent all our travellers’ cheques, and we took a lot,” Monty said. “And bear in mind, we had no money.”
He admitted to Fearne that he and Sarah made a “completely reckless” decision: “We decided, okay, we will risk it. Instead of going home when we ran out of money, we mailed for more.”
Monty cashed in a grant worth the equivalent of £3,000 today
At the time, Monty had recently received a £500 grant: “Bear in mind,” he pointed out, “this is 1980, so 500 quid is probably the equivalent of about what, three, four grand, something like that.
“I worked out that I could get access that grant from Venice … so we decided to mail our bank and we had to wait 24 hours. So we had no money for 24 hours.
“So we didn’t eat for 24 hours. But we had the hotel. That was OK because we didn’t have to pay for that until the end of the day.”
Monty explained that he and Sarah were caught up in the romance of the city: “It was such a combination of it being the first trip we took together, and we were young and in love – we still are – but it was wonderful, the Biennale was on and so it just felt like the most romantic place in the world.”
Monty returned to Venice for his 2022 BBC series Monty Don’s Adriatic Gardens. He told Fearne that gardens in the unique Italian city are rarely seen by outsiders, because they tend to be hidden behind walls.
In the show he discovered a hidden vineyard, a garden created on a disused rubbish dump behind a local church, and a public garden featuring a secret passageway leading directly to the world-famous St Mark’s Square.
