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Visitors to the Dordogne will have plenty of opportunities to get into the festive spirit this weekend as the region’s major towns play host to grottos and Christmas markets.

French holiday makers and locals alike can take part in the festivities at Perigeuex, Bergerac and Sarlat over the coming weekend. As well as dozens of opportunities to hear seasonal music, sample seasonal and regional delicacies, and for children to meet Father Christmas, each town will host a market offering plenty of gift ideas for those back home.

In Perigeux over 20 wooden chalets have been built in the Francheville square. They will open their shutters this Saturday and remain open until the new year, from half eleven till seven pm every day. A Christmas atmosphere seems certain to be in effect as no matter the weather, visitors to Perigeux will be treated to snowflakes and each day at five pm the Mayor will illuminate the many Christmas lights that have been placed around the town.

As well as the opportunity to feast upon mulled wine and hot chestnuts, the town is hosting its first ever ice skating rink and a variety of activities for children.

Visitors can use the ice rink from 1300 to 1830 on the 12th and 13th of December for 5 euros an hour. The rink will remain open all week though opening times will differ throughout the week, with the last session on the 17th between 5pm and 9pm.

Children will be able to play for free on a giant chessboard or at medieval style games, as well as enjoy a trampoline for the same 5 euros p/h price as the ice rink. Periguex’s local theatre troupe will also offer free performances of “The Snow Queen and The Goblin” on Saturday, and the Vertigo Theatre Company will perform “Mister Christmas” on Wednesday the 16th.

Meanwhile the town of Bergerac is also offering its 5th annual covered Christmas market. This will run until boxing day in the Lattre De Tassigny, which has been decorated with dozens of festive cartoons.

Bergerac is also hosting several forms of holiday entertainment to visitors. On the opening Saturday visitors will be given a free ride into town on Santa’s very own train. Around the town itself, Bergerac’s rollerskating club will be dressed as goblins and will cavort across its streets throughout the weekend.

Later in the day the public will help decorate the Christmas trees surrounding the marketplace, and at 6pm the town choir will perform carols, hymns and festive songs to ring in the holiday cheer.

Sarlat may be last but it can hardly be said to be least; a Christmas village of around 40 cottages and its very own ski rink puts the market town in direct competition with its larger neighbour, Perigeux.

Here, the festivities will run until the 3rd of January and the rink will be open every day, though times will differ throughout the week. It will cost 4 euros an hour for both children and adults. On both days of this weekend Sarlat will host an ice skating show at 6pm, as well as a display of acrobatics and juggling in the marketplace between 3pm and 5:30pm.

Sarlats market will open at 10am this Saturday, graced by the presence of Santa and his elves. Old saint nicholas has even established his own dedicated postbox in the square of la Grande Rigaud, letting children post their Christmas wishes straight to him even if they are on holiday.

A recent sociolinguistic survey has shown that the Dordogne Aquitaine is the region of France with the largest number of fluent speakers of the romantic Occitan tongue.

Occitan was once spoken across Europe, in Spain, Italy, Monaco and particularly in France. Once it was the everyday language for the rural French south and until the 14th century it was the primary vehicle for the poetry of medieval troubadours. Some historians claim that Occitan poetry, singing and plays inspired the rise of the vernacular in medieval literature.

However the language has suffered a continuing decline ever since, falling out of favour soon after the traditional provinces were replaced by the department system in the late 18th to 19th century. In what Occitan speakers refer to as La Vergonha (“shame”), various policies were brought about by the French national government to officially exclude regional dialects and promote the current language until well into the 20th century.

However in the 1999 census, there were almost 610,000 native speakers of Occitan and perhaps a million more with some fluency in the historic tongue – the majority of whom live in the Dordogne.

According to a story on Sudouest.com, Dordogne is the department where the language still survives. Although nearly every resident is likely to speak french as their most-commonly used language, Sudouest reports that a sociolinguistic survey has shown that for many of the region’s elderly residents it remains their native language.

Visitors to the Dordogne may notice that many street signs are presented bilingually, in both French and Occitan, particularly in the area’s many historic towns and marketplaces.

Occitan is so common among Dordogne residents that the regional council has decided to launch a unique training plan for its social care system – language training for care staff. The department’s health authorities hope that by speaking in their native tongue, alzheimer’s patients can be helped more effectively and seniors can easily communicate with care staff.

The General Council of the Dordogne have released their major decisions of their Standing Committee, which they discussed in a meeting earlier this week. They discussed 76 cases, from road transport to social affairs. They awarded grants for investment property, and equipment for exploration exogenous between various companies like: Nontron in Riberac, Notre-Dame-de-Sanilhac at the Shell, at Cantillac, Sarlat and Chancelade, at the value of 194,794 euros.

They also announced a grant of 50,000 euros to create a business hotel in the town of Montignac, as well as 85,283 euros to the community of communes of Val drones, for the development of the Area of Economic Activity Tocane-Saint-Apre.

It also decided on 8,535 euros under the youth employment scheme, to various associations in the renewal of 17 jobs.

An agreement for the provision of a park area of the Departmental Committee Campaign, for the Athletics Dordogne has also been approved, for the county championships cross country from January 10, 2010. Also under the departmental policy, an allocation of 174,000 euros for housing has been awarded. This will go towards housing acquisition, improvement and see the construction of 88 homes under the delegation of competence to support the stone.

Under departmental scholarships for secondary schooling, 51,840 euros will be shared out between 20 colleges. And an award of 2,592 euros will be divided between the colleges under the introduction of organic food in public colleges, to promote healthy eating.

Russian billionaire Eugene Shvidler had almost everything you could possibly imagine, however there was one thing missing in his life, that was until he bought a French vineyard in the Dordogne. Shvidler turned 45 earlier this year and held his birthday bash on the grounds of his 200 hectare vineyard.

He decided to buy a vineyard after he went on a wine tasting trip to France with friends in 2000, a year later he bought Château Thenac in the Bergerac region for a few million Euro. Shvidler is worth an estimated £1.5 billion and is ranked 334 in Forbes’s billionaire list, and is best friends and partners with Roman Abramovich. He works with Abramovich running the investment company, Millhouse and made his fortune in oil in the 1990′s.

What possibly could one buy a billionaire for his birthday? Well Abramovich turned up at his French 16th century manor house and vineyard, with a flock of twelve sheep. Shvidler said: “A friend of ours owns a place in Scotland, and when I went there I liked the sheep. They had a special shaped head.” The sheep have now settled in their new home at Château Thenac, tucked away in a field bordered by forest at the bottom of his vineyard. He intends on keeping them merely for pleasure, with no intention to breed them for food.

He looks after his vineyard himself and his goal is to produce a first-class wine that will rival anything neighbouring Bordeaux has to offer. So far the development of the first ever oligarch-approved wine is going very well for him. Last year 220,000 bottles were produced, many of which went straight into the cellars of the most fashionable restaurants and department stores in London and Paris. The 2006 Château Thenac Blanc Sec, or in English, a blend of Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon grapes was chosen as the wine for last year’s Serpentine summer party. The Fleur du Perigord Rouge is served on Virgin Atlantic first-class flights, and the Parisian luxury food store Fauchon has just started stocking Z-Thenac, the very strong eau de vie made using the vineyard’s two hectares of plum orchards.

This Sunday the town of Bergerac is to offer a treat for truffle lovers.

On December the 13th the town will be transformed for Bergerac Day, a celebration of the local delicacy which has won Dordogne and the rest of the Perigord area international renown.

Organisers throughout the Couze Valley are to gather in the town’s medieval marketplace, which is already a popular site for holidaygoers and gourmet tourists. There visitors will not only be able to purchase substantial and sublime examples of the Black Perigord truffle, but they will also be able to take part in tasting sessions, cooking lessons and even an organised dinner and drinks session.

Truffles are a rare form of mushroom that is held in high regard in European cuisine, particularly by the French. Some of the most valuable examples can cost 600 euros a kilogram, though cheaper examples can be found throughout the local markets of the Dordorgne.

The Perigord region is seen by many as the home of the famous ‘black truffle’ (the tuber melanosporum species of mushroom. France is the largest producer of the delicacy, and 80% of this comes from the Perigord during the ‘season’ of late autumn and winter. It has been known for wealthy gourmets to choose the Perigord for their french holidays simply because of the delicacy.

The market itself is set to open shop at 9:30am, but many interesting events will take place throughout the day.

Chief among these is the dinner in the town hall. The organisers will offer visitors a session of aperitifs at 1pm, before inviting people who’ve booked a seat into the town hall for a dinner based on truffles – toasted, scrambled, roasted or fried depending on your choice.

But perhaps the most intriguing event will be demonstration held early in the day, at 11:30am – a display of the famous truffle-hunting dogs, used by locals to locate the rare mushrooms of the Perigord region. These highly trained hounds have replaced the ‘truffle hogs’ once used to seek out truffles in the open ground. Although they require much more training than the pig’s innate appetite for the delicacy, they are much less likely to eat the truffles when they find them.

According to local news website Sudouest.com, visitors can reserve dinner seats by ringing ‘Ms Bezange‘ on 05 53 22 33 36. Adult tickets will cost 20 euros per person, whilst children under 10 are given a discount of 10 euros a place.

Last weekend hundreds of athletic enthusiasts from across the Dordogne raced through Bergerac, raising money for charity in the athletic fashion the region is famous for.

250 people took part in a relay race through the gentle hills and valleys of the South Bergerac area of the Dordogne. This was the seventh consecutive year that Dordogne’s local athletics clubs have taken part in the fund-raising events occurring across France as part of the national Telethon.

The Telethon is an annual televised fundraising event that has been held in France since 1987. Across the country people pledge money to the programme or to local efforts held in support of the event. Money raised is dedicated to the French Association Against Myopathies, a muscular dystrophy charity.

One of the participants was Yoann Durand, a member of the French Athletics Team for the 2012 Olympics. Durand was born in Bergerac, and told Sud-ouest.com that he was racing for his younger cousin, Geoffrey Durand. Geoffrey, 11, lives in Bergerac and suffers from muscular dystrophy. The Durand relay team said that he was ‘at the heart’ of their team, and their efforts.

The race started at around four o clock on the Monbazillac hills outside Bergerac. From there spectators were said to have a ‘superb’ view across the countryside to the town itself, and of the progress of the race as it neared Bergerac.

Money raised from sponsorships for the race itself will be added to funds raised by t-shirt sales in the weeks leading up to the Telethon.

Glamorous women from across France will flock to Nice this weekend to compete for the throne of ‘Miss France’. And among them will be one young woman from the Dordogne.

21 year old Aurelie Zengelin, from the town of Douzillac, in Dordogne was chosen as Miss Aquitaine earlier this year. This weekend the statuesque brunette will compete with 11 other young women from across the country for the position of France’s mostglamorous girl.

Since winning her title, life for the salon assistant and trilingual student has changed daramtically. Not only does she travel throughout the country meeting judges and promoting her bid for Miss France, she also practices for the competition every single day.

From 9am until noon, she and the other competitors practice their choreography. After that it’s on to yoga, exercise and singing practice, before meeting judges and fans until late in the evening. According to SudOuest.com, it’s only at about 10pm that Aurelie gets a chance to ring her family in Douzillac.

Today the whole Zengelin family has packed themselves into vehicles and has started the journey to Nice, where they will watch their girl compete for Aquitaine, Dordogne and Douzillac at the cermony. Her mother, Isabelle Aquitaine, told Sudouest.com that this was “the final straight” and she looked forward to seeing her daughter after nearly a month of separation.

Miss Aquitaine is already a strong candidate for coronation; she has secured 1748 votes already and according to Sud-ouest.com, a huge amount of support and encouragement from fans both local and remote.

The first cave in the Dordogne to be discovered, the Font-de-Gaume is one of around 25 that are open to the public. Since then, hundreds more caves have been found in the surrounding area of the Dordogne, in the Vezere Valley. Other sites in the valley have shown significant evidence of signs of human living, going back more than 300,000 years.

The original Lascaux cave in the Dordogne was closed to the public in 1963, after its art began showing damage. This damage was mainly caused by the carbon dioxide emitted by visitors, around one million in the 15 years after it first opened to the public, in 1948 had visited the cave. Now a replica of the two chambers in the Lascaux cave is open to the public, the Bulls’ Chamber and the Axial Gallery- where most of the artwork was found. This replica opened in 1983, just 200 metres from the original cave.

Many people are attracted to the Dordogne because of its history, art and museums. One British regular visitor to the Dordogne recommends is as the perfect French holiday, Mr Green said: ”The Dordogne is a region as beautiful as any I’ve ever seen. For those who are not interested in what lies beneath the surface of the earth, one can easily spend a week touring the chateaux of Dordogne, which in their grandeur and with their height, make you feel as if you’ve walked into a fairy tale.”

The Dordogne also boasts many castles, and the majority have all been restored by their owners in order to be opened to the public.

French consumers have said to have stayed strong throughout the economic downturn, and French holiday sales this year are predicted to have exceeded previous years. November and December are expected to be successful in attracting tourists for skiing and other French holidays this winter.

Retail sales are also not likely to be significantly affected during this years holiday sales period, this is down to the supportive effect of France’s extensive automatic stabilisers and low inflation. Consumers in France are now at an advantage, the French winter sales season usually begins in the second week of January, but a new law now allows for more flexibility on the timing of sales. This means retailers will more than likely offer big discounts in a bid to attract additional business in this period.

This includes sales of holidays, so more people will see French holiday discounts before January, so they can spend Christmas and see the New Year in the French snow. Following the recent snowfall across Europe many companies have decided to increase their holiday discounts to at least 30% for holidays starting on 11 and 12 December. Snow is continuing to fall across the Alps with resorts receiving up to 70cm of snow on 1st December. The Pyrenees have also had their fair share with up to 35cm in places.