Dordogne Accommodation

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Dordogne Secrets were taken on various Walking Dordogne Tours.
For more info about seeing the REAL Dordogne, please visit www.walkingdordogne.com  

Reccommended Accommodation

B&B Ferme de Tayac, a lovely 12th century former farmhouse and monastery in the heart of the Vezere Valley and just 1 min. from the center of Les Eyzies. www.fermedetayac.com

More than 400.000 years ago our ancestors settled in the lush green Vezere Valley. Today, Les Eyzies de Tayac and the surrounding area is one of the most interesting, fascinating and beautiful places in the world. We invite you to come and see and experience the area around Les Eyzies de Tayac, only then will you understand why our ancestors chose this place as their home.

In and around the town of Les Eyzies de Tayac are a series of prehistoric rock dwellings, the caves include some of the most significant archaeological finds of the Upper Paleolithic (from about 40,000 to10,000 years ago) and Middle Paleolithic (200,000 to 40,000 years ago) periods they are especially noted for their extensive wall drawings. Les Eyzies is ideally situated in the the Vézère valley which contains 147 prehistoric sites dating from the Paleolithic and 25 decorated caves.

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It is particularly interesting from an ethnological and anthropological, as well as an aesthetic point of view because of its cave paintings, especially those of the Lascaux Cave, whose discovery in 1940 was of great importance for the history of prehistoric art. Les Eyzies de Tayac is also home to the National Prehistoric Museum, Font de Gaume, Combereilles, Cro Magnon Shelter, The Grand Roc, Fortified Church of Tayac ( Saint Martin) and many, many more sites of interest.

Reccommended Accommodation

B&B Ferme de Tayac, a lovely 12th century former farmhouse and monastery in the heart of the Vezere Valley and just 1 min. from the center of Les Eyzies. www.fermedetayac.com

One of the great pleasures of a holiday in France is being able to browse at the local markets. As you wander, your senses will be aroused with the perfume of herbs and spices….here you will find quality fruit and vegetables at excellent prices, also meat, bread and cheese….in fact the perfect way to begin your holiday is to visit a local Sunday market to stock up with food.

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Located in Les Eyzies, on the Sarlat road, Font de Gaume Cave is a showpiece of Magdalenian engravings and paintings from around 14 000 BC. The flints (chisels, scrapers, blades) and other things found in the cave during the excavations testify to a continual occupation since the Mousterian age, or the age of the Neanderthals.

Discovered in 1901 by D. Peyrony, the Cave, 130 m long, contains about 250 paintings. The visitor can only see 30 of them, the most beautiful ones and the best preserved. After 60 m underground, the “Rubicon” is the beginning of the decorated part of the cave, with red dots on the left wall. These caves were not used as dwellings, they were shrines, according to A. Leroi-Gourhan The Grotte de Font-de-Gaume is famous for its cave paintings from the Magdalénien period. It is entrance is 20 m above the valley floor of the Beune valley, at the lower edege of a huge limestone rock.

There are many polychrome paintings and some engravings. The 240 figures show 80 bisons, which are the dominant motive. Most other pictures are also animals, 40 mammoths, 23 horses, 17 reindeers and deer, eight primitive cow, four goats, a wolf, a bear, and two rhinoceroses. More interesting, but less frequent, are four hand outlines and 19 geometric figures.

The cave was first settled by Stone Age people during the last Ice Age – about 25,000 BC – when the Dordogne was the domain of roaming bison, reindeer and mammoths. The cave mouth is no more than a fissure concealed by rocks and trees above a small lush valley, while inside, it’s a narrow twisting passage of irregular height in which you quickly lose your bearings in the dark. The first painting you see is a frieze of bison, at about eye level: reddish-brown in colour, massive, full of movement, and very far from the primitive representations you might expect. Further on a horse stands with one hoof slightly raised, resting. But the most miraculous of all is a frieze of five bison discovered in 1966 during cleaning operations. The colour, remarkably sharp and vivid, is preserved by a protective layer of calcite. Shading under the belly and down the thighs is used to give three-dimensionality with a sophistication that seems utterly modern. Another panel consists of superimposed drawings, a fairly common phenomenon in cave painting, sometimes the result of work by successive generations, but here an obviously deliberate technique. A reindeer in the foreground shares legs with a large bison behind to indicate perspective.

Location: Les Eyzies-de-Tayac. 1km from the centre of Eyzies on the left side of the Beune valley.

Open:

MAR Thu-Tue 9:30-12 + 14-17:30,
APR-SEP Thu-Tue 9-12 + 14-18,
OCT Thu-Tue 9:30-12 + 14-17:30,
NOV-FEB Thu-Tue 10-12 + 14-17.
Closed 01-JAN, 01-NOV, 11-NOV, 25-DEC.

Dimension: Length = 400m. Guided tours : every 40min. Only 200 visitors per day, reservation necessary! Address : Grotte de Font-de-Gaume, BP 7, 24620 Les Eyzies-de-Tayac, Tel: +33-553068600, Fax: +33-553352618

Reccommended Accommodation

B&B Ferme de Tayac, a lovely 12th century former farmhouse and monastery in the heart of the Vezere Valley and just 2 min. from Font de Gaume. www.fermedetayac.com

Getting your accommodation high on the major search engines is extremely difficult. Paying to have your site listed or advertised through 3rd party sites can be very expensive with little or no benefit for you.
Luckily, this does not always have to be the case.

I have a Dordogne Portfolio of more than 40 high ranking Dordogne related sites, these sites are all linked together to create a very strong presence on the web and high on the search engines.

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RESULTS

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Make use of my Dordogne network, and advertise your accommodation on my sites.

Contact me for more info