Colour–magnitude diagram using hipparcos data (Perryman & ESA 1997). The green point indicates the position of a quiescent U Sco, the ellipse shows the location of a queiscent RS Oph and the blue point shows the position of V2487 Oph. The arrows respresent a quiescent V2491 Cyg: tail (d = 10.5 kpc, E_B − V = 0.43); red arrow-head (d = 14 kpc, E_B − V = 0.23); grey arrow-head (d = 2 kpc, E_B − V = 0.23; see Sect. 4.2). The grey dashed region indicates where most quiescent classical nova systems are found (Darnley et al., in prep.).