The Midge Master

My encounters with midges over the years has finally paid off. I am launching The Midge-Master, soon to be on the top-ten list of essentials for all island baggers. It is a midge hat with five hi-speed fans that keep the bugs at bay. It's great fun to wear, especially if you are camping with others. You can watch as its hi-efficiency fans blow hordes of bloodthirsty midges over to your friends. Watch as they squirm and swat, while you sit comfortably enjoying a dram. What better way to spend a night under the stars!

As an added bonus, on windy days when the bugs are not a problem, the Midge-Master can be used as a generator to charge the fans and your smart phone. No longer will you have to fret about being off-grid. You'll be able to watch your favourite cat videos anywhere, from Mingulay to Rona. I well remember long nights camped on the far shores of Loch Reasort; the only sounds the gentle lapping of surf, the pitter-patter of rain on the tent, barking red deer, and drumming snipe. It was driving me crazy—oh how I longed for a fully-charged phone to catch up on the latest celebrity news. With the Midge-Master I'll never have to suffer such agonizing deprivation again—and neither will you. Details on how to purchase coming soon. 

Field testing The Midge-Master in Glen Corodale
Note the Tesco Brandy - when only the best will do!

Even though I've defeated the mighty midge, I will not be resting on my laurels. Under development is the next evolution in insect defense. After the midge, the fiercest foe of the besieged island bagger is the cleg: those big, fat, blood lapping devils, whose bite lingers long after that of the lowly midge. What's in development is the Cleg-Cap. Only one obstacle remains before it will be available to the public. I am having a bit of a problem keeping the Venus Fly-Traps attached to the cap from biting the wearer. On the plus-side they do keep down the dandruff. But no problem is insurmountable. A breakthrough is imminent, and some much needed relief will soon be on the way for bug-bothered island-baggers everywhere.

Gleann Shanndaig - Midge Heaven

A few weeks ago I wrote of a wonderful campsite I had in Glen Shanndaig, on the isle of Lewis. It was an amazing place, where I'd pitched my tent below the ruin of a giant beehive cell. But I did gloss over something. There was a big downside to that spot. Something all who've hiked in the islands are well aware of: midges.

Midges are the bane of all who venture into the interior of the islands where, unless there is a significant breeze, or freezing temperatures, they are ever-present - eagerly waiting to feast on the warm, deliciously fresh blood of weary hikers.

While setting up camp my scalp started to itch. No, not from dandruff (though there may have been some). The itch was due to a million or so midges relentlessly burrowing through my hair in search of the mother lode; in search of a warm and sweet nectar, and a rare one at that. For my blood is a rare vintage in this part of the world (Cascadia 1957 - with hints of Canadian pine and Pacific kelp). An exotic blend not often found in the middle of a Lewis bog.

And so the bugs were in a ecstatic frenzy - drunkenly munching away on every inch of exposed skin and scalp. From their excited cries of ecstasy - over the years my ears have become attuned to midge cries of ecstasy - it appeared they'd never tasted anything so good, and so I had to quickly put on a bug net for protection. I call my net 'a bug hat', as it is a baseball-style cap with a handy net that pulls down over the brim. But it is not fool-proof (and I can be a fool at times). The trick to putting it on is to pull the net down without trapping a few hundred voracious insects inside, all deliriously happy to discover that their competitors have been walled off, and that they, now alone, have a tasty smorgasbord of fresh flesh to dine on.

Once the bug hat was on, and the tent pitched, I crawled inside, where I spent a half-hour trying to kill the thousand or so midges that had managed to get inside with me - I think I got three of them. But three was better than none, and so the mighty midge-killer, his blood-lust quenched for the evening, settled down to spend the night. Eight hours to rest weary legs; eight hours to re-energize enough to carry on across the moorland to visit what would turn out to be the most impressive beehive cell he'd ever seen. Stay tuned.

Midges Galore

It has been a few years since I've had a really bad experience with midges, so just how bad they can be had faded from memory. And I did not give them a second thought during the first few days of my time on Lewis last month because strong winds were keeping them away. But they were there, hunkered down in the grass, hungrily waiting for things to calm down.

During that time I made a three-day trek from Morsgail to the Ardveg, and then up to Uig. The first evening of the walk I camped in the Ardveg, pitching my tent in the same spot near the old blackhouses where I'd camped in 2001 (see the May 23, 2013 post). As I set up camp, Joe came over to check me out, sticking his big nose into my tent and knocking over my pack. That did not bother me, for Joe is a friendly horse that belongs to the new owners of the Ardveg estate, some 2700 acres that covers the Ardveg and Ardmore peninsulas. 

Joe of the Ardveg

I crawled into the tent around 11pm, after being treated to dinner and drinks by the new owners of Ardveg (an unexpected treat in the back of beyond, and very welcome after eight hours of bog-hopping). A gentle breeze was blowing, and the last thing on my mind were midges. The tent is too small to keep my pack inside, and so I left it out for the night.

In the morning I looked out the tent's mesh screen to see what the weather was like. All I saw was a blur. 'Oh,' I thought to myself, 'things sure look fuzzy, I should put my glasses on.' On went the glasses, and I took another look. 'Uh-oh, things are still blurry.' 

What I was seeing was a thick mass of hovering midges, greedily drawn to my tent by the carbon dioxide venting through the mesh. A vast horde, just waiting for me to come out and play. It's then I realize that I'd made a tactical mistake. My bug net was in my pack, and the pack was... outside .... uh oh...

What to do....  Then I realized there is something useful in the tent. Inside my kit-bag was a bottle of the island-hiker's best friend - no, not Scotch - it's a bottle of full-strength DEET. Now there are certainly better ways to start a day than by smearing yourself with a gallon of insecticide, but that's what I had to do.

Prepared for action, the next step was to retrieve the bug net. I unzipped the tent, stepped out, and started to quickly dig through my pack to find the net. During this time I'm engulfed in a cloud of nasty, thirsty, teeny-tiny bugs. As I find the net a look at my DEET-drenched hands showed them to be covered with a black mass of dying, squirming midges. I also started to notice a tingling, itchy feeling in my scalp, the only exposed area not drenched with DEET. Spurred on by desperation I grabbed the bug-net and dashed uphill to find a spot with a breeze.

With the net on I was prepared to break camp and move on to seek out the beehive cells of the Ardveg. Lesson learned: keep all your defensive midge weapons with you inside the tent. A lesson I learned the hard way.

Note: The story of the walk through Morsgail to the Ardveg is scheduled for the November/December 2016 issue of Scottish Islands Explorer.

Midges

Reading Paul Camilli's Rassay blog yesterday I learned of the Midge Forecast. It reminded me of a night I spent in Glen Coradail of South Uist last June. The bugs came out in force around 7pm and I had to retreat to the tent well before sunset. I will be hiking around Harris, Scalpay and Lewis in the coming weeks, so I hope the 1 out of 5 rating the forecast currently has for that area holds.

Shields up in Glen Coradail