A staff outing to La Bussière Castle
On 24 October last year, the staff from the castles of Sully-sur-Loire and Chamerolles met up at La Bussière Castle for a unifying outing full of discoveries, exchanges and surprises.
We were given the opportunity to visit this site in the company of its owner Mrs Bommelaer. Behind the scenes stuff which involved conversations about operations, management, cultural projects, future arrangements etc... A true professional encounter for us to exchange our aims, our successes and sometimes our failures, but also our upcoming investments and works. In addition to discovering a historical place and its history on a personal level, we were able to participate in a whole professional process. While certain people looked at the room information sheets, others fluttered around the gardens, while ecertain people focused on the monument’s accessibility conditions, othders look at the collections and the scenography. A successful and enriching exchange!
According to Mrs Pirou, the woman in charge of the castles of Sully-sur-Loire and Chamerolles, what has drawn attention to it are the “incredible gardens, the immensity of the grain outhouse, the peaceful character of the place and its green setting - a bit like in Chamerolles, where you will see the castle and its equally diamond-shaped brickwork and its gardens - the beauty of the interior rooms like the kitchen, the gallery overlooking the water or even the dining room. One quirky detail which caught my attention was unarguably the office window on the ground floor, just above a fireplace which looks out onto the artificial lake. No pipe obstructs your view, which is both very quirky and successful.”
The gardens remain a bucolic place where you will go from discovery to discovery among the climbing rose bushes, the numerous fruit and vegetables which grow there (tomatoes, leguminous plants, pumpkins, to name but a few) and the numerous 1001-coloured flowers which enliven this vegetable setting.
The staff were inspired by the passion, patience and courage which the owners had towards this monumental structure and by their affection for the place and their desire to share it and let others discover it.
The objective of the staff outings
We have arranged one staff outing per year since 2020. In the first year, we were welcomed by Mr. Lelevé at Meung-sur-Loire Castle. In 2021, it was Mr. Guyot who welcomed us at Ferté-Saint-Aubin Castle. This year, it was Mrs Bommelaer who had the kindness to let us discover La Bussière Castle.
Discovering other places, interacting with our partners, establishing connections and knowing how to speak about one another remain the cornerstone of our work in order to communicate information to visitors more efficiently. It is also a matter of establishing connections between the staff members by also including the seasonal workers, casual workers and everyone else who make sure that the castles of Sully-sur-Loire and Chamerolles can function all year round.
