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The West Highland Way - any advice?


DonnyTJS

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11 hours ago, DonnyTJS said:

Just heard that an American colleague is slack-packing the West Highland Way with his son next month. Any useful tips I can pass on, especially regarding midge protection?

Ta.

There was a whole thread on here a wee while back about midgees. Not sure if you can still get access to it, but there was a lot of interesting stuff on it.

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5 hours ago, Flure said:

I think that's one of the Picaridin based ones? Most commercial insect repellents are based on Picaridin or DEET. They are all pretty much the same but with different concentrations of active ingredients. 

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26 minutes ago, deecie said:

Apparently they've changed the formula within skin so soft and it no longer is effective.

The basic skin so soft stuff never had any clinically proven repellent effect on insect. It's been tested a few times. But, as with many medicines, if folk think it works then it "works". At least it helps to sell product. They now have an insect repellent product which contains a chemical repellent.

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37 minutes ago, Orraloon said:

The basic skin so soft stuff never had any clinically proven repellent effect on insect. It's been tested a few times. But, as with many medicines, if folk think it works then it "works". At least it helps to sell product. They now have an insect repellent product which contains a chemical repellent.

Suspicious that they have a new product and the old one stops working at the same time.

What are the chances?

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22 minutes ago, deecie said:

Suspicious that they have a new product and the old one stops working at the same time.

What are the chances?

It is a while since I had much interest in this stuff, and I believe a couple of small trials might have been done more recently that indicated some repellent effect of the original stuff, but the sample sizes were too small to be clinically significant. But if folk think it works, that's all that matters.

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Speaking as a Michelin 5-star midge eatery I've sadly yet to find anything that works.

In terms of things to see, I've never done the walk & don't know the exact path but I've spent a lot of time around various bits of the route. As someone famously said, these are a few of my favourite things...

Commando Memorial (http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/speanbridge/commando/)

Glencoe museum (http://www.glencoemuseum.com/)

Ballachulish slate mines (let me know if he's interested & I'll send you a GSV link as to where they are)

Green Welly Stop at Tyndrum for a decent coffee

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Why not kick-start the first section with a visit to Glengoyne Distillery at Dumgoyne .http://www.glengoyne.com/

Kings House Hotel, Glencoe for a fine meal of fresh trout. If lucky the local wild herd of deer will be grazing in the grounds but approach with caution. Incidentally the stag has a fondness for celery. http://www.kingshousehotel.co.uk/

Every visitor to Glencoe has to stop at the Clachaig Inn https://www.clachaig.com/

Kinlocheven Hobbit house? http://www.tyndrumbytheway.com/accommodation/hobbit-houses/

 

 

 

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