Mozzies on west coast route

[patpalloon]

You can try "Smidge", just released this year. We have some in stock and I plan to try it as they love me!!
If it works for me I would say it will work for most folks.
http://2010.midgeforecast.co.uk/index.php/shop

Gari

Smidge sounds good, and thanks for the link. The midge forecast will start in a couple of days!
The midges certainly go for me, so it's something I need to think about. I won't be camping and I'm hoping that at the end of May/beginning of June when I go there won't be too many of them.

[wearwell]

Midges are slow and give up easily - just keep pedaling.
If you have to stop for any reason make sure you can do whatever it is you have to do as quickly and efficiently as possible. There's often a window of opportunity of 10 to 20 minutes. Once they turn up there's no talking to them - they take no notice if you beg, pray, scream or swear.
I adjusted my brakes at a bad time - vaulted back on and pedaled off to get away but left a bungee dangling which wrapped itself round the block and derailleur. The next half hour was hell!

[Mick F]

Midges are slow and give up easily - just keep pedaling.

I was cycling down the West Coast and Skye in 2008 and I was splattered with the buggers. There were clouds of them and I could hear them hitting my helmet. I'd hoped they'd all died!

I pulled over at one point and went behind some trees to take off my tights and fit my shorts. Trouble was, my tights were bib tights so I basically had to strip naked to get them off! Shoes, of course, top too, then pull them off. Shorts on pronto and then my top back on, then shoes.

By the time I'd done that, I was being eaten alive.

[vernon]

I found Avon Skin So Soft to be very effective on my JOGLE and LEJOG.

I thought that it was a wind up when I was advised to purchase it and it wasn't until I saw a two metre wide display of it at Tyndrum that I became convinced that it was a product worth considering.

The only places where the midges got me were the places that I failed to spray i.e.

behind my knees

the flesh that became exposed when my shirt pulled out of my shorts when I bent over.

I'll be using it again at the end of May when I go to the World Ceilidh at Knockengorroch - the perfect site for midges, a damp expanse of peat in a remote glen with a stream running through it.