Aurore & Gunnar: Barbecue and sightseeing: Badecon le Pin, Le Château de La Prune, Ceaulmont

On Friday we spent an hour 'picnicing' during lunch time with two of Aurore's colleagues - Alexandre and Loïc - and as the weather was fine, we had a pleasant 'repos' in the grass.

Aurore had decided that everything we ate and drank should have the colour red and Alexandre and Aurore had done the shopping and they succeeded in presenting a 'red lunch' - no wine though.

Unfortunately these are the only photos I could find from the picnic/pique nique:

After work Alexandre came and picked us up in his car, as he had invited us to a barbecue at his home in a small town called Badecon le Pin.

The name is a bit bizarre as 'con' can mean both 'idiot', 'scumbag' or 'dim' and if you think away the 'e' we have a mixture between the English 'bad' and the French 'con'.
Alexandre calls himself a 'bad(e)connard'.
When we arrived one of his friends - Nico - had arrived, taking a swim in the swimmingpool.
We started to prepare the food and peu à peu the rest of the invited guests came along.
Among them another colleague to Aurore - Manu - with girlfriend and his youngest brother.
We were later on joined by Alexandre's brother and a female friend.
The evening was spent eating, drinking, talking, laughing, swimming (not for us as we hadn't brought our bathing suites and didn't feel like swimming naked) and to some extent playing music.
Alexandre has played in different rock bands throughout the years and he plays the guitarr, sometimes bass and Manu's younger brother plays the bass too and in the house they had a piano wherefore I tried - after about fifteen years - to play a little or only making some sounds.
Manu had - among other things - brought a Camembert that he wanted to put on the glow of the fire but unfortunately we didn't succeed lifting it up from the fire whereby it died.
The hours went by and at about 2 o'clock in the night/morning we went for a walk in the small town and this was good after all the eating.
Aurore and I went to bed at 3 o'clock.
Alexandre and Maxim continued to play music in the cellar until around five or six o'clock in the morning.

The next day - or rather the same day - we went up at nine o'clock and together with Manu and his girlfriend we started to arrange with the breakfast (petit déjeuner) but it wasn't easy to awake Maxim but even worse awakening Alexandre.
At lunch we had finished our breakfast and after a swim in the pool, Alexandre was ready to take us on a guided tour around the county (département) and below we can see some pictures from this guided tour.
First of all we see our grillwork (left below) before the Camembert 'dropped dead'. After the burning heat there, some of the guests used the swimmingpool as you can see in the other picture: Alexandre is diving.

Our first stay was at 'Le Château de La Prune-au Pot', named after a family (Pot) who once live there.
Today it's a ruin but a very beautiful one and it's inscribed in 'The Inventory of Historic Monuments' ('l'inventaire des Monuments Historiques').
Alexandre told us that it earlier was closed for the public and that one only could visit the exterior, walking around the castle but today it was open and only for us, as there were no other people there.
This was also the first time for Alex being able to enter the ruin.
Alex and I climed the tower to the right but strangely enought there were no fences or barrages at the top.

This is the same tower as above to the right but from underneath.

The view from the left tower:

Below we see the church in Ceaulmont
from where one have a splendid view over the countryside.

Below the scenery from the church high above.

The 'river' floating beneath is Creuse which also the name of the county/département:

The below pictures display the church in Crozant.

I entered the church and later on we sat down taking some photos of another castle ruin,
displayed in the next photo.

After this Alex toke us to a forest not far from this site and there we wandered around and lost our way.
We actually came to a crossing in the forest and Alex and I wanted to take the road to the left but Aurore said we had to go to the right.
Of course she was right! Something she commented on: "I was right - as usual!".
At the start we saw this sculpture, looking like a combination of a goblin and a fertility God.
He is the latter and as you can see, his erected penis is at the bottom of the sculpture and many women or pairs come here to be blessed when deciding to have children.
These kinds of fertility sculptures or - like in La Châtre - -wells , you can find almost everywhere in France.

On Cimetière Père-Lachaise you can find a tomb depicting the journalist Victor Noir and he is used in the same way, but that is another story.