My advice to anyone looking nowadays… would be to home in on what you really want by way of land/property/accessability etc and only take weather as a rough idea, rather than the decisive factor.
40 years ago there used to be a definite change in climate once we got south of Orleans and then, change again on getting south of Limoges… etc etc
but no idea what’s what any more… it’s all up in the air… 
One of the few times she stayed still long enough, she is usually bouncing around like Zebedee on speed 
When we first came here (47) thirteen years ago, we met a young builder who said his favourite times of the year were spring and autumn and that’s certainly what we found the first few years we were here - short winters and long springs and Indian summers.
Now, we seem to go almost overnight from coldish (but not very)/wet/grey winters to hot dry summers, which as a gardener I find very frustrating, because there is always so much to do in the spring. Our clay ground is so sodden at the moment I just can’t get much done.
As someone said earlier, must learn to adapt. For example, I hate the thought of pruning roses back in late autumn as we get flowers up until January (in fact some are flowering now) but may have to.
Round here - I am impressed with the way the local farmers conserve the winter rain. Virtually every farm has its own small reservoir and there is a string of very large ones that go the length of our valley where the water is piped to anything up to thirty farms.
I agree Stella. This was sort of the point of my post. I think there is a consensus between many who wish to relocate to France and estate agents (I wonder why 
) that the climate in much of France is actually much better and reliable than it is in reality. If we had known the summers would be this hot and the winters so dank, wet and miserable then we would definitely have chosen another location. However it’s all so variable and unstable these days that going anywhere is a gamble!
This year was the first year we had to use one of the farm wells to top up the old castle moat or we would have lost our fish and fresh water oysters.
We are lucky insofar as with the farm being an old dairy the installed two 12ft X 40ft concrete wells with 500l accumulation tanks and 7 bar pumps because they used water cannons on the surrounding fields, so we were able to keep the ponds filled, they also feed the gardens and veg plots as well so we use very little town water.
We have notice a gradual fall off in the rain we get during the day time in summer as usually the thunder storm we get keep the moat levels up enough, not last year though and we will see if the trend continues this year.
Now knowing of the gamble… one can make arrangements to accommodate either too hot and/or too cold… with extra insulation etc etc… if one has fallen in love with a particular property…
I would not move from ours… not now… love the property, the folk and the life… the weather comes and goes… and we adjust…
What’s a fresh water oyster? Sounds interesting…can you eat them?
We have large mussels in our pond - about the size of my hand - but have never thought of them as edible. Anyway they’re sort of friends, along with all the carp, and we don’t eat friends.
Simple. Don’t bother. I went two summers without cutting the grass in my garden in Bristol. It only got to about knee height …
Interesting question, this. I posted a thread on SF some time last year “Does your grass look like a digestive biscuit?” to research this issue. As I put the question in about June, everybody said their grass was nice and gree. I should have asked in mid-Sept.
One of my reasons for moving from Valencia, Spain, was to escape ‘lockdown by climate’ - the loss of 3 months of 12 to unbearable heat.
My target area was defined by a line more or less E-W thru’ Tours and E-W +/- Poitier. Eastern boundary west of Bourges. I had second thoughts and shifted focus to Normandy, which should be, in theory, similar to Somerset/Devon but with somewhat better summers.
I’m now having third thoughts, bck to my original zone. Looking fwd to hearing about how it is in that area.
There’s a lot of ‘here’ in replies, without saying where ‘here’ is. Or [quote=“JJones, post:4, topic:33711”]
this region
[/quote]
Which region?
I found I was getting bored with this, day after week after month after year
And I am really enjoying
Bringing out my inner Constable.
‘Normandy Grey’. Sunset in Manche, on Christmas Day
I suppose they are the same mussels or bivalves, the farmer always called them oysters but while you can get freshwater oysters the usually live in brackish water.
They get bigger than oysters and live longer, up to 100 years I believe, we don’t eat them and have only seen a couple of pearls in them, but the farmer had a neckless made for his wife from the pearls he got from them.
The majority we have are hand sized but we have soon really big ones when we are clearing out the ponds.
Hi di hi Peeps.
We have lived in Marseillan 34340 (10 minutes away from de Med) for 5.5 years, and this year is the first time we have had many, many days of frosts and temps below Sheila (three degrees) in the morning, along with a biting bitter wind coming down from up North. And we also had a day of snow. There was snow in December 2018, but we were living and working in Brussels so we only saw pictures of the event. The last time we saw snow was when we lived in London - part of Plague Island Season 1 
Our summer temps have been increasing each year - with the August of 2018 hitting 45 degrees. Without moving, sweat trickles down ya back - delightful!
I recently read an article stating that, in the future, the SoF will have to deal with extreme dought condtions and more wild fires.
Such fun to look forward to!
Cheers - Steve
For my wife and myself intending to move to France, this thread is quite the eye opener. We had loosely focussed on an area possibly within an hour of the med. We’re not so sure now.
We want to be able to have more freedom to enjoy the outdoors than the weather allows here in Shropshire. I can’t see us doing much in 45 degs heat apart from maybe spending August in pleasantly warm Gdansk.
Much head scratching ahead!
@Griffin36 That looks pretty much like our mussels…I will start calling them oysters as sounds much posher to have oysters at the bottom of your garden…
A thorough and detailed discussion of the weather… how very British! Just kidding
From my experience and knowledge, I think it’s important to firstly acknowledge that climate change is happening right now, it’s not going away and we’re not going to go back to the good old days of clearly defined seasons and predictable rainfall and temperature patterns.
Being able to quickly adapt to the changes in weather is vital - things like water harvesting and growing plants suited to your environment should be second nature to us all, regardless of where we live.
Hi Michael. It is difficult to base your research on historical climate records as everything is changing so quickly. Knowing what we know now about Limousin winters we would have avoided it like the plague. It is utterly dismal and depressing here for weeks and weeks on end and that has been the case for all our four winters in Limousin… Summers are too hot for us as well, but historically here it was rare to see above 30 degrees. We have friends who left here and went to Montpellier (for work) and they were absolutely freaked out by the heat down there in high summer 2020 (pushing mid forties). I grew up in rural Shropshire, a beautiful part of the UK. Snowy winters in my childhood and better summers. I suppose we only remember the good ones!
Even ten years ago in the Minervois I found the summers to be rather too hot and the winters could be freezing with the winds whipping off the Pyrenees. There were plenty of cooler ‘blue sky’ days though.
We are now living in southern Brittany where I find the weather to be much more agreable. Extremes are rare. It has been known to creep into the low 40’s in summer but 25-27 is the more typical range. Snow and ice are a novelty and the climate is generally moderated by the Atlantic. The downside of that is that it can be rather too wet at times and storms do seem to be increasing in frequency.
We do still have seasons here though they are possibly less apparent by traditional points of reference. It is the most temperate department in France according to statistics. Having moved around a bit myself I know the ideal does not really exist but it could be a lot worse than here.
Hi Damien. I think for the British style of gardening we are really passionate about then your climate in Brittany would be the best for us as growers with it’s lack of extremes. Even at altitude in Haute Correze we can see summer temps above 40 degrees and strong drying summer winds. In winter it has been known to drop below minus 25. That’s a huge temperature range for a stable garden and healthy plants. Our garden here suffers from extreme drought and heat and then extreme wetness and cold weather (cold as in 2 or 3 degrees not freezing). That combination of cold and constant wet is a killer for many plants. When it does rarely get proper cold here then the easterly/northerly windchill can bring the temperature crashing down to well below minus even in the daytime. We’ve certainly given ourselves a challenge choosing this part of France.
Yes - this was a major consideration for us, as keen gardeners.
In terms of climate/ecological breakdown in general, it’s important to recognise that this will increasingly manifest not only in temperature changes, but in much more locally and regionally destructive ways - more extreme and more frequent weather events, floods, droughts, forest fires, etc (I would now never buy a house in a forest) and that these will fundamentally alter where people want to live and where agriculture and industry need to be. It is these secondary effects and their implications - mass migrations, massive disruption of local economies, etc - that will probably be the main determinants of where quality of life survives.
I see they are now making decent wine in Wales!
I am not exactly a passionate gardener Paul as I am too busy restoring and caring for old cars that I have a weakness for.
I have, however, made several forays into your world over the years by way of a potager. Having been discouraged by earlier attempts I took the whole thing a little more seriously last summer and was impressed by the results. This summer it will be twice the size.
What drew us to the Massif Central was the mountains and upland areas (having lived in similar areas in the UK - Snowdonia, Mid Wales, Cairngorms) The Plateau Millevaches in particular is very reminiscent of the Cairngorms, and parts of Mid Wales with it’s coniferous forests, deciduous woodland, moorland of heather and lakes and rivers. I could just not equate such a landscape with 40 degree temperatures!! The contrast between summer and winter in the Millevaches is extreme to say the least. Whereas it used to be an area where rainfall had a more even year round spread, it is now seeing extremely wet winters and droughted summers. I imagine there will be severe long term impacts upon the flora and fauna.
