Still experimenting with various things,  with  www.leseyzies-tourist.info  I am using a combination of Joomla and one or two other scripts. I am  new to this, so I am still ironing out some of the creases, saying that though I am very pleased with it so far.. still, alot needs to be done.

Feedback welcome. 

www.leseyzies-tourist.info

www.dordognetourist.info

www.leseyzies.info, this brings me to over 40 Domains. I will be experimenting with a few ideas, and useing  ” Web 2.0 ” to  (try) and create an informative site, once I have achieved this, I will, together with my www.leseyziesdetayac.com try and knock the Official but not mine “leseyzies.com” of the first place on google.. anyway, gotta fly, got 5 web sites I’m working on.. I’m getting too old for this!!

Most people visiting the Vezere and Dordogne Valley have an interest in history, so why not stay a few nights in an historic B&B. in the heart of it all.

B&B Ferme de Tayac, a 12th century former farmhouse / monastery ideally situated in Les Eyzies de Tayac, in the heart of the Vezere Valley, known as the “Prehistoric Capital of the World”

In the beginning of the 12th century, the monks of the monastery of Paunat settled in Tayac, and started building the fortified church of Tayac, Saint Martin. At the same time they started buiding “Ferme de Tayac” which became the working farm and monastery for the monks.
In 2001 Suzanne & Mike purchased Ferme de Tayac after it had been unoccupied for over 10 years. It was in a sorry state, and was deemed dangerous and a hazard.
It took Suzanne & Mike 7 years to bring Ferme de Tayac back to it’s former glory.
With among other things, meter thick walls, rooms built into solid rock, oak beam structures, and bedrooms in former monks quarters make Ferme de Tayac a speacial and very unique place to stay whilst visiting the Dordogne, and it is not hard to see why Ferme de Tayac has been the travellers choice of accommodation for 2 years.

Ferme de Tayac is an ideal place to use as a base to explore this stunning region. Below is a small list of interesting and useful things and places to do and see, all within 10 minutes from Ferme de Tayac.

• St. Martin fortified church of Tayac. 0 min.
• Abri de Cro-Magnon. 5 min. walk
• Small train station. 5 min. walk
• Shops, Bank, Post office & Restaurants. 8 min. walk
• Canoeing & Horse riding. 5 min. walk
• National Prehistoric Museum. 8 min. walk
• Les Eyzies Tourist Board. 8 min. walk
• Font de Gaume. 15 min. walk
• Combereilles. 20 min. walk
• The Grand Roc. 10 min. walk
• Gorge d’Enfer. 8 min. walk
• Laugerie Haute. 10 min. walk
• Lots and Lots more

For more and the latest updated info on Ferme de Tayac please visit their official web site www.fermedetayac.com

  Ferme de Tayac reviews

UK SITE: www.fermedetayac.co.uk

OFFICIAL WEB SITE: www.fermedetayac.com

www.dordognedesign.com

We specialize in web sites for the Dordogne region. We know how extremely difficult it is to get your name or business onto the search engines. We do not just design web sites, we help you get your site seen by potential customers from around the world.

Designing a web site is the easiest part, getting people to find your site amongst the more than 92 Billion!! (indexed by google in 2006) sites can be tricky and very expensive.
I have designed more than 20 Dordogne related sites to help advertise your web site after it has been launched.

Let Dordogne Design put you on the web, can you afford not to?

Here are some stats that show the importance of a web site:

Key facts and figures from 1 March 2007

• Over 3.1 million tourists
• Average length of stay (all accommodation): 10 days
• Representing almost 31 million nights’ accommodation
• A direct turnover of at least 980 million euros
• Over 6,000 permanent jobs in tourism (6900 in July & Aug.)
• Tourism in the Dordogne represents over 31% of the local economy

More facts and figures.

• 77% booked part of their vacation online. (airline, ferry, rental car etc)
• 93% of visitors researched the area online before visiting.
• 71 % of visitors booked accommodation online

5 years ago, these figures would have all been below 30%, and 10 years ago they would have all been below 3%, however, in 3 year time they will ALL be above 90%

These figures show the importance of a web site, and no one can design, host, advertize and optimize your dordogne related site better than Dordogne Design .
Dordogne Design, owned by de Paulus who knows how to put the Dordogne and your site / buisness on the web.
With more than 20 Dordogne related web sites that are already high on the mayor Search Engines list are ready to advertise your site.
Advertising a site designed by Dordogne Design on all our parent sites is FREE, saving you hundreds of Euro’s, and focusing only on the Dordogne which will attract only people that are searching for Dordogne related sites.

Dordogne Design does not design web sites for a living, which means the prices are as low as you will ever find, and your web site is a de Paulus Project, which means he will always be there for you whenever you need help or advice.
Get in touch with Dordogne Design and see what they can do for you… Can you afford not to?

www.dordognedesign.com

The Vezere Valley… I have spent my whole life travelling, and have lived in numerous countries, but I just LOVE the Vezere Valley, I have spent 6 years exploring this area, and know what it has to offer, I know that the Vezere Valley has far far far more to offer than any of the guide books write about… www.vezerevalley.info

ABOUT THE VEZERE VALLEY

In and around the town of Les Eyzies-de-Tayac are a series of prehistoric rock dwellings, the caves include some of the mostsignificant 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. Situated in the VézèreValley (the location of some 150 archaeological sites) the Eyzies-de-Tayac caves are among a series of decorated grottoes in the area that were collectively designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1979.

Following the discovery of flint and bone splinters in the area in 1862, a series of excavations were undertaken by the French geologist Édouard Lartet and the English banker Henry Christy.
Their work quickly established Les Eyzies-de-Tayac as the principal archaeological site for the Upper Paleolithic Period. Among their discoveries were the multicoloured animal drawings of the Font-de-Gaume cave and an incredible display of stalactites and stalagmites in the Grand Roc. A rock shelter at La Madeleine (the type site for the Magdalenian culture) yielded bone and antler tools. The cave of Le Moustier is the type site of the Mousterian industry, a tool culture known for its flake implements.
Cro-Magnon is the name of a rock shelter near Les Eyzies-de-Tayac, where several prehistoric skeletons were found in 1868. Sent to the site, the French geologist Louis Lartet began excavations in which he established the existence of five archaeological layers covered with ash. The age of the human remains found in the topmost layer (along with worked flint and the bones of animals of species now extinct) is Upper Paleolithic (c. 35,000-10,000 years ago), but the attribution of these to a clearly defined Upper Paleolithic culture is less definite. Traditionally regarded as Aurignacian, since typically Aurignacian artifacts were found in the rock shelter, they could be more recent, and it has been suggested that they should be assigned to the
Perigordian (a separate industry covering approximately the same time period as the Aurignacian), which would give an age of about 25,000 BC.

In Paleontology, the term Perigordian industry is given to the tool tradition of prehistoric men in Upper Paleolithic Europe that followed the Mousterian industry, was contemporary in part with the Aurignacian, and was succeeded by the Solutrean. Perigordian tools included denticulate (toothed) tools of the type used earlier in the Mousterian tradition and stone knives with one sharp edge and one flat edge, much like modern metal knives. Other Upper Paleolithic tool types are also found in Perigordian culture, including scrapers, borers, burins (woodworking tools rather like chisels), and composite tools; bone implements are relatively uncommon.

The Perigordian has two main stages.
The earlier stage, called Châtelperronian, is concentrated in the Périgord region of France but is believed to have originated in southwestern Asia; it is distinguished from contemporary stone tool culture complexes by the presence of curved-backed knives (knives sharpened both on the cutting edge and the back).
The later stage is called Gravettian and is found in France, Italy, and Russia (there termed Eastern Gravettian). Gravettian people in the west hunted horses to the near exclusion of the reindeer and bison that other contemporaries hunted; in Russia Gravettians concentrated on mammoths. Both appear to have hunted communally, using stampedes and pitfalls to kill large numbers of animals at one time. Gravettians
in the east used large mammoth bones as part of the building material for winter houses; mammoth fat was used to keep fires burning. Gravettian peoples made rather crude, fat “Venus” figurines, used red ochre as pigment, and fashioned jewelry out of shells, animal teeth, and ivory.
Archaeological finds in the Perigord, made another profound impact on the study of religion when in 1841 the discovery of prehistoric human artifacts and later finds gave clues to early man’s magico-religious beliefs and practices. These discoveries, notably the cave paintings in the Dordogne, northern and eastern Spain, and elsewhere, gave scholars encouragement to work out the course of man’s religious evolution from earliest times. Spectacular as prehistoric archaeology was proving to be, however, it could only yield fragments of a whole that is difficult to reconstruct. Even the famous cave paintings of Les Trois Frères, in the Dordogne, for example, which portray among other things a dancing human with antlers on his head and a stallion’s tail decorating his rear, does not yield an unambiguous interpretation: is the dancing figure a sorcerer, a priest, or what? He very likely is a priest presenting himself as a divine figure connected with animal fertility and hunting rites–but this remains as only an educated guess. Hence, it became attractive to many scholars of religion to try to supplement ancient archaeological evidence with data drawn from contemporary primitive peoples–i.e., to interpret the prehistoric Stone Age through present-day stone age cultures. This procedure has several pitfalls–partly because contemporary “primitives” are themselves the product of a long historical process and because their culture may have changed over the millennia in many and various ways.
Lascaux: A cave containing one of the most outstanding displays of prehistoric art yet discovered, located above the Vézère River valley near Montignac. It is a short distance upstream from another major cave-art site, Eyzies-de-Tayac. The two sites, with some two dozen other painted caves and 150 prehistoric settlements in the Vézère valley, were added to UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 1979. Discovered by four teenage boys in September 1940, the cave was first studied by the French archaeologist Henri-Édouard-Prosper Breuil. It consists of a main cavern (some 66 feet [20 meters] wide and 16 feet [5 meters] high) and several steep galleries, all magnificently decorated with engraved, drawn, and painted figures.
In all there are some 600 painted and drawn animals and symbols, along with nearly 1,500 engravings. The paintings were done on a light background in various shades of yellow, red, brown, and black. Among the most remarkable pictures are four huge aurochs (some 16 feet long), their horns portrayed in a “twisted perspective”; a curious two-horned animal (misleadingly nicknamed the “unicorn”), perhaps intended as a mythical creature; several red deer; bovids; great herds of horses; the heads and necks of several stags (3 feet [1 meter] tall), which appear to be swimming across a river; a series of six felines; two male bison; and a rare narrative composition.The narrative scene has been variously interpreted but is probably based on shamanism. Its central figure is a bison that appears to have been speared in the abdomen; hanging, or spilling, from the animal near the spear is a lined, ovular sack that may represent entrails. In front of the bison’s horns, and falling away from the animal, is a bird-headed man–the only human figure depicted in the cave–with an erect phallus. Just below, or beside, the man is a stick with a bird ornament as a finial. Another spear is near the man’s feet, and off to the left a rhinoceros seems to be walking away from the scene. Archaeologists have theorized that the cave served over a long period of time as a centre for the performance of hunting and magical rites–a theory supported by the depiction of a number of arrows and traps on or near the animals. Based on carbon-14 dating, as well as the fossil record of the animal species portrayed, the Lascaux paintings have been dated to the late Aurignacian (Perigordian) period (c. 15,000-13,000 BC). The cave, in perfect condition when first discovered, was opened to the public in 1948. Its floor level was quickly lowered to accommodate a walkway, destroying information of probable scientific value in the process–and the ensuing pedestrian traffic (as many as 100,000 annual visitors), as well as the use of artificial lighting, caused the once-vivid colours to fade and algae and bacteria to grow over some of the paintings. Thus, in 1963 the cave was again closed. In 1983 a partial replica, “Lascaux II,” was opened nearby for public viewing; by the mid-1990s it registered some 300,000 visitors annually.

The inhabitants of what was to become the Perigord region have left so much evidence of their existence and way of life that the valley of the Vézère has become a sanctuary to their memory and a prestigious prehistoric site. Industrious and prosperous tribes of Gauls who lived in the hills and already knew the secrets of iron joined together and became known as the Petrocores. Under the Romans, they built in the valley the important town of Vésone which became a city in the first century AD and part of the Roman Empire. After the invasions, the antique Civitas Petrocorium became the province of Périgord and played an important part in the struggle for the independence of Aquitaine, before coming under the French monarchy. The French king Henri IV was the last Count of Périgord.

During the Hundred Years War, the region marked the boundary of French and English possessions and was thus the scene of incessant combat, resulting in the many castles which were the bastions of rival factions. Feudal struggles were fierce and the spirit of liberty was evident from early on. The towns were dministered by consuls and walls were built to protect the cities.
After the destruction and massacres of the Wars of Religion (1562 - 1598), these military defences were used for the last time during the troubles known as “La Fronde” (1649 - 1652).
During the French Revolution, the Périgord region changed its name in 1790 and became known as the
Dordogne, with the capital changing successively from Périgueux to Bergerac then Sarlat before finally becoming Périgueux again.

Recommended accommodation in the Vezere valley:

B&B Ferme de Tayac : www.fermedetayac.com Lovely B&B in a 12th Century former farmhouse / monastery in the hart of the Vezere valley

ENJOY the VEZERE VALLEY    

The site is still being worked on, but is being tested live at www.artistsdisplay.com and should hopefully be finished by Feb. 1st .

To give this project a kick start, I am giving away 10 yearly memberships away worth $130 on a first come first serve basis, so if you are, or you know any artists, Please send me an Email and I will set them up with their own account so they can display, manage and sell their art online.

Merry Xmas everyone, and I wish you all a very happy and healthy 2008 

www.thedordogne.info  is the third Dordogne accommodation rental  site, cloned from the other 2, but excellent for the search engines, and I am putting some cheap packages together to maximise getting dordogne related sites onto the net.  

www.thedordogne.info/dordogne  a clone from dordogne-dordogne.com but another excellent way to get seen. SEO friendly, and already listed in the top pages of Google and LIVE. The second week is turning up more than 2000 unique hits with more than 18000 page hits.. Not bad going for a site that was launched just 2 weeks ago.  

www.thedordogne.info/directory  This baby is just 3 days old, and is still being worked on. It is an SEO Friendly link directory, for all and any Dordogne related web sites. So far I have created 3 packages, Free, Premium and Sponsered. This is a very good and cheap way to advertise your buisness.

www.leseyziesdetayac.com Not really a new site, but it has been completely changed. Very informative, SEO friendly and an excellent way to get your name on the net.

I have added a third site for Dordogne home owners to advertise their accommodation online. All three sites specialize in the Dordogne, and attract 1000’s of potential  customers looking for accommodation in the Dordogne.

If you have a B&B, Gite, Chambres d’hote, or any other holiday accommodation, you can add it to the following sites specializing in the Dordogne:

http://thedordogne.info 

www.dordognesnicest.com

www.nicestvacationrentals.com 

Dordogne - Dordogne is an ideal web site to get your buisness onto, within the first 3 weeks this site is getting between 12-15 thousand UNIQUE hits per DAY from around the world. To achieve this within 3 weeks is an excellent achievement. My estimate is that I will reach the average 100.000 unique hits within another 5 months.

Keep your eye on this site, because I will be adding lots of very useful  bits in the coming days. 

 www.dordogne-dordogne.com

This is a very complex web site, specially designed for SEO