Tourist guide

• CÉRILLY
  With a population of 1,500, this commune comes under the heading of “villages” playing host to the Tour this year. It is one of the entry points to the famous forest of Tronçais, created by Colbert in the 17^th Century.
• COULEUVRE (km 9)
  On the edge of a forest, this village makes a living partly from the porcelain industry and has a museum all about it.
• AINAY-LE-CHÂTEAU (km 30,5)
  A large château with twenty-four towers was built in the 11^th Century. Only a few ruins are left to admire today.
• SAINT-AMAND-MONTROND
  It was through working with and trading in gold that this town grew up in the 19^th Century.

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Olivier Perrier, who was born in the village of Hérisson, went back there in the 70s to pursue the career he had started as an actor and theatre director in the city. He retrained in the distilling of whisky, which has now become a traditional Bourbonnais product.

“My idea has always been to exploit the town/country theme. By returning to the area, I wanted to create something using the culture from here and then export it elsewhere. That led me, for example, to stage a show in Paris, with a Charolais cow and a carthorse. Above all, I was able, with a few others, to create a theatrical tradition in Hérisson, and put on shows using country people. And I was delighted to see that they could be made to do exaggerated things on stage. For the adaptation of one Nordic poem, where making black pudding was treated like a ritual, I saw a 70-year old lady, who everyone in the village knew, hit a black pudding and yelling at it to “become as hard as a p…!” By bringing our company here, we also helped a lady to leave the husband who was ill-treating her and some young girls who had become crushed by their experience at school to gain self-confidence by interpreting Rabelais in its original format…

Now the theatre is a real business in this village, and as for me, I have started to distil a whisky, of which part of the production is matured in barrels made of oak from the forest of Tronçais. This is a very important aspect for me, because it is the measure of the quality of an alcoholic drink.”