Chateau du duc D’epernon

Chateau du duc D’epernon

It had been so long since we visited this castle that I can’t remember much about it. I can still remember everything about the road to get there, how we finally got over the castle wall. As usual, we parked far away and walked towards the castle to take in the surroundings as well. We passed 1 farm in the area where a large Dobermann barked falsely at us from behind a fence. Luckily he was behind a fence we said to each other.

Arriving a bit further at the castle wall we followed it for a few hundred meters in the hope that it would have broken or fallen over somewhere. Unfortunately, this was not the case so I suggested that I climb over it and take a look if there was another possibility further up, this could be done out of sight of possible passers-by. Just as I was sitting on the wall a car came in the distance, we were sure it would pass us so I decided to jump and my buddy would just go for a walk.

I had already seen that the ground within the walls was a lot lower because there I would jump into an empty ditch. There were some steel rods sticking out of the wall so I held on to them and made the jump to lower myself into the ditch moments later. That all seemed like a nice plan, but I had overlooked the old fence inside the wall, there were points sticking out like an ornamental fence. That was exactly where my leg landed on but luckily I always wear safety pants so there was no scratch on the pants.

I can’t say that about my leg, which had a small tear due to the impact of the blow and was bleeding quite a bit. Long story short, I found an easy entrance for my buddy further down the road and once I got to the castle I dropped my pants and we connected. And we got started.

We were done pretty quickly and from the castle, I saw that there was an old footpath through a small park and gazebo to a fence. I couldn’t tell if that gate was open or if we could climb over it, but we were going to try. Once there, the last part including the fence was overgrown with ivy, trees, and our favorite: blackberry bushes. I found a way to go underneath them and crawled on all fours under the overgrowing as best I could.

Arriving at the gate, one of the two parts of the gate was missing that we could easily get through. I paused before jumping out of the bushes before I might startle passers-by and I didn’t want anyone to drive or jump into the ditch in fright.

What happened next was also very frightening, the large Doberman who lived just opposite had escaped and there I was on hands and knees face to face with a large growling dog. Immediately I crawled backward like crazy and ran back to my buddy. We walked as fast as we could into the forest to the point where we entered and disappeared.

We never saw or heard the dog again.