"Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres", declared Julius Caesar in his memoirs. He went on to explain his theory that the France he knew could be divided demographically into three separate regions. Gaul is more complex meteorologically. But it is possible to generalise, and if one does so, a pattern of five distinctive climatic regions throughout France emerges from the detail.
Perhaps the easiest to recognise, and many would say the most amenable, is the Mediterranean climate. The area thus favoured is, as the name suggests, in the country's extreme south - a relatively narrow coastal strip stretching from the Pyrenees along the Gulf du Lion to the Cote D'Azur. Most of its rain is concentrated in the winter half of the year: the winters are mild and the summers dry and very hot. And of course there are hours of blue skies and sunshine - well over 2,000 a year.
The climate next most recognisable in France, which meteorologists know as oceanic, is a regime that, like our own, is dominated by frequent incursions of low pressure systems from the Atlantic to the west; it is seen in its purest form in Brittany and in the lower parts of Normandy.
Rainfall is frequent, spread fairly evenly over the 12 months, and only very rarely heavy by continental standards. The winters are as mild as on the Mediterranean coast, but the summers are much cloudier and cooler.
Alsace, Lorraine, the Ardennes and parts of Burgundy are usually described as being sub-continental in their climate. They have a regime prone much more to extremes than other parts of France, taking their character largely from the vast expanse of continental Europe to the east.
And the mountain climates belong to the Alps, the Vosges and Jura mountains, and the Pyrenees, and the higher, middle portions of the Massif Central. Here variety, rather than homogeneity, is prominent, with local and valley winds assuming great importance.
These four climatic zones leave only one part of the country unaccounted for - albeit a large part to the west and north of the Massif Central, including the vicinity of Paris. Here the climate is classified by meteorologists as sub-oceanic. As the name implies, the influence of the Atlantic westerlies predominates, but the distance from the sea, and the sporadic incursion of the continental influence, result in a greater range of annual temperatures than is found further to the west. The summers are hotter than on the Atlantic coast; the winters colder, and the weather generally noticeably more dry.