Considering camping around Argyll/Loch Fyne and the Western Highlands sometime June/July - how bad is it likely to be? Worth putting off the trip or just go for it? Have survived South Florida but it took a loooong time for the buzzing blighters to go off me.
[i]Nothing[/i] really works, but the tantalising possibility that [i]something[/i] might torments us as we scratch furiously.
🙂
Malvern, in all honesty, not coming to Scotland because of midges is like not going to New York because you dont like hotdogs.
Get some smidge and you'll be fine. Honestly.
Some of us manage camping in the NW every weekend (heck, some of us even work outside!) without much more than a few sweary words now and then.
Midges don't like direct sunlight, wind or smidge. You'll almost always have at least one of those at your disposal.
Folks say Skin So Soft doesn't work, I did some Science and put some on one arm not the other while camping in midge hell at inverarnan, left me in no doubt at all that it works, they still landed on both arms but they bit the **** out of the un-lubed arm... Also, you can combine it- SSS then a spray of some evil chemical over the top.
[quote=Northwind ]Folks say Skin So Soft doesn't work, I did some Science and put some on one arm not the other while camping in midge hell at inverarnan, left me in no doubt at all that it works, they still landed on both arms but they bit the **** out of the un-lubed arm... Also, you can combine it- SSS then a spray of some evil chemical over the top.
It does work - if applied liberally and often. As you've spotted, it's not actually a repellant, it's a barrier.
The downside of SSS is you end up with a film of dead midges up your arms and legs.
Face net. Tuck it in.
They won't leave you alone so protect the fragile bits that get bitten anyway: ears, eyelids, nose.
Although I would no more camp in damp, overgrown vegetation next to still water in July than I would put my head in the oven.
For the campsite, we had good results with mosquito coils. The midgies may just not have been present that night, although the pitter-patter of hungry midgies against tent fabric the next morning suggests otherwise...
Whatever you think works take a net for when it doesn't.
my sweat, scientifically tested and found to repel them.