Vorpal wrote:When I've been in midgey places in Scotland, I have stayed in youth hostels. Whether camping is feasible depends partly on how well the midges like you. Like with mosquitoes, some people are less bothered by them more than others. If you are not too bothered by them, or only moderately bothered, camping with a good bug repellent and midge net is probably ok. If you are their favourite food, it might still be a problem.
If you are using any off-road routes, you may be able to use bothies for some of your overnight stays. Here's a thread about bothies
viewtopic.php?f=16&t=112974
Huh, interesting - a nice resource. I'll read up on those.
If your tent is single skinned, it will pretty much always have condensation in Scottish weather. Get a double skinned tent from a reputable brand. Have a look at reviews & things before you buy. A double skinned, well-ventilated, 3 season tent should have little or no condenstion, but may require a somewhat warmer sleeping bag & mat. Also, as you are carrying it, weight is a consideration. Here's a thread about tents
viewtopic.php?f=42&t=110506
I'm assuming that by "skin" you mean what we call "wall" in the US? eg. Single-walled tents used for winter camping and mountaineering, etc? I don't have any single-walled tents, just double-walled ones. I have a small collection these days (as I was searching for my "perfect" bike touring tent). I got a Hilleberg Unna:
http://us.hilleberg.com/EN/tent/red-label-tents/unna/which I ended up not liking that much, despite Hilleberg's construction and materials being some of the best. I don't like their "the fly is always up" design, though, of course, that's very useful in a rainy and cold northern climate. I recently bought a Mountain Hardwear Shifter-2:
http://www.mountainhardwear.com/shifter-2-1585651.html... and tried that out on a bike camping trip this past weekend; it sets up fast, very simple design, rather minimalistic, I like it. I *do* wonder if its mesh is fine enough to keep out midges, though, given what folks have said about a lot of tent mesh only being good for mosquitoes. I don't see a lot of articles about which tents have fine enough mesh. I might contact Mountain Hardwear to ask them (if they even know).
The first tent I ever bought was a Moss Starlet; I still think it was probably the best tent I've ever used. It's a bit heavy by today's standards, but I wish I could find another one; it'd be great on a bike tour. I even tried contacting various people associated with the company (it doesn't exist anymore); managed to contact a designer at Cascade Designs (who owned all their assets), who used to work at Moss, trying to find the original schematics to see if I could have one rebuilt with modern materials. They had given the old plans to a woman who ran a company that fixed these tents, but sadly, she died about a year ago and her husband has not been answering my attempts to contact him. It was a great tent:
http://www.wanderwheels.com/site_ww/wp- ... 20x410.jpgI have a pretty warm down bag (I think it's rated to 20F) from Western Mountaineering (famous, independent US bag maker) so that won't likely be an issue, anyway.
- Tim