Aye main problem is if the winter is mild then it doesn't kill the buggers off meaning load more of them, the main time they are biting is when it is warm and damp.

As you say there are a few quite defined spots where they are most active, we found Avon Skin So Soft better than other repellents, YMMV.

I did it two years ago in June with a workmate and one of his relatives and we hardly saw a single midgie, I've still got an unused bottle Jungle Formula. I'm sure I've seen people recommending Avon so soft before, I might just take some. Thanks for the advice.



We're using a mix of hostels, b & b and one hotel (Kingshouse). We will be using day-packs and paying Travel-Lite to take most of our gear.

DEET is good but can damage waterproof clothing, hard plastics and tents.

We normally walk Munros Nov/Dec or spring to avoid the little bu99ers. I got caught out once prior to a mountain biking/walking trek. In the few seconds it took us to unload the bikes we were covered, and I mean covered. They were like a second skin. We had to ride like hell to get them off. If I walk during mossie season I take a lightweight mesh over jacket and hood. We sometimes ridgewalk and lightweight camp, It's no fun trying to cook your evening meal whilst something else is dining on you



The wife's booked the hols this year, apparently we are going to the Caribbean, so it looks like I'll have to dust off the snorkelling gear.

Funnily enough...

A combination of fear and lack of money stopped me traveling when I was younger. I'd get the brochures, and gaze wistfully at them for hours, but never do anything about it. As I said, partly a lack of money, but also fear.

Now I've just recently hit the big 50. And when tb did, three years ago, we did a special trip. So the big question for the last 12 months or so has been what would MY big trip be.

Well, I'm going to travel on my own. Finally. I feel that I actually [ineed[/i to do it – I need to prove, to myself, that I can. So, in spring this year, I'm going to toddle off on my own for a week to 10 days. First part is planned already pretty tightly, but the rest is not.

I'm going to go to Germany and ... wander.

I'm both looking forward to it – and bloody terrified already.

Interesting to see so many bemoaning austerity but planning foreign holidays already. Laughable.

Why all the fear of going abroad - xenophobia?

Is your inability to comprehend the idea of empathy long standing, Dally?



Not remotely. Just the fear that was, in many ways, taught me by my parents. That's what C/conservatives do, in my experience.

Yeah its an absolute travesty that we've had to wait for someone to die in the family for us to inherit the sort of money it costs for just two flights to the US (staying with family). Next time I'll default on the mortgage and use my state handouts to abroad.

Now calm down HWS. Dally thinks that, if you believe in fairness in society, that means that you should – I dunno – volunteer to give up some of your own money to support those on, say, lower pay. Not that their employer should do so, but you should. That's the real mark of believing in any idea of fairness. And if you don't do this, you're a hypocrite.

So either Dally himself does that, or he doesn't believe in any idea of fairness. I think you have to make up your own mind on that – and, indeed, on the intellect that effectively posits such an idea.

All you need remember that (in my experience and that of others I have spoken to) is that a German trait ("generalisation", I know) is being a bully. If they start taking the Mickey just stand up to them - they invariably back down.

Sorry I wasn't having a go at you (in fact I hadn't read your post - and still haven't) - it was just a general point on the thread. Apologies for any offence taken, though not intended.

You'll love it, I did the same in Edinburgh a few years ago although admittedly I did have the Fringe festival to occupy my mind but the thought of just wandering a city with money in your pocket and no other demands on your time is what holidays should be about.

No probs

I did that recently too in spite of the best efforts of a white van driver. No big trip for me (unless you count the West Highland Way) but I did treat myself to a 150-500mm Sigma lens.



Did you see Julia Bradbury walking through Germany in a short series a few years back?

Watching the programme about Kavos on Channel 4 last night is kind of making me think I want to go back there.

make sure you only do the birds twice maximum or drink THAT drink!!
Watched some of it last night and those people that go there were worse than animals.
enjoy your holiday if you will remember any of it!!

I did, yes. And it was repeated not long ago. Some of the countryside looks wonderful.

I intend to travel from London after work on a Friday: St Pancras is just down the road from where I do most of my work. I can go to Paris (which I know pretty well, so that avoids early panic) and get a sleeper to Hamburg. The aim is to spend a day and night there and then go on to Lübeck, where I'll spend a couple of days at least, because there are a number of things I specifically want to explore there.

From there, I'm not sure. Maybe Dresden, maybe straight down to Munich/Bavaria. And then maybe back via the Black Forest.

I've been to Berlin before, so although I love that city, there's no point in using this valuable time to go there again.

I want to combine the urban and the rural, if I can. I'd really like to get into a bit of forest, if possible: the whole idea of the forest lives large in the German psyche – and it's really something that we lost in the UK centuries ago. But that'll depend on the public transport – although everything I know thus far suggests that is good enough to make it possible.

Kavos serves only one purpose - to keep all of those who wish to partake in that sort of "holiday" in one small place at the furthest extremity of what is otherwise a very beautiful island.

I went to Corfu in 1980 and 2011 and I'm pleased to report that in the main the North of the island is pretty much as it was 30 years ago, we visited Kavos for a couple of hours in 1980 and it was one hotel at the end of the island, but yes, it was an club 18-30 hotel and even though I was 23 at the time it just seemed like a good way to waste a two week holiday and several thousand drachma.

I stayed in Corfu, Kassiopi, lovely little fishing village, loved it.

Kavos is great for nights out but the place itself is filthy. I stayed in one night (too much the night before) and by morning my bed was covered in blood from all the mosuito bites on my body.

Anyone been to Magaluf and can you reccomend it?

I'm only going by what my two daughters tell me, between them they seem to have gone to all of the Mediterranean so-called "In" resorts over the past five years, the youngest went to Magaluf last summer and wasn't all that impressed with the resort although she did pay what seemed to me to be extraordinary amounts of money to go and see some club turns who ar-ise about with records all night long and said that she enjoyed that.

Not my scene as you can gather



If only their grandad was still alive they could go and stay with him in Benidorm and watch him sing every night

magalluf = kavos.
similar prog on monday on bbc 2.3 or 4, cant remember, (its on IPlayer) as the kavos one, watch it and see for yourself.again they are animals(sorry to insult the animals and compare them to humans)who frequent magalluf and kavos, same standard of people go to those resorts.

The guy who was found unconcious on the beach in Magaluf - at first they thought he'd been attacked but he still had his wallet and phone on him, then they managed to wake him up to find he hadn't a clue who he was, where he was or the fact that it was a police officer that he was trying to fight with even when the police officer was in uniform and was shouting "Police!" at him constantly.

That person had paid a lot of money to get into that state, he'd had to fly to Magaluf inthe first place, then pay for a hotel and then go out and drink so much alcohol that he wiped his brain completely void, basically he'd formated his brain and forgot to re-install the operating system - and it had cost him a fortune to do it.

If it wasn't for the fact that he'd do it all again the next night and hand over another fortune to Spanish businesses then I'm sure that int he days of Franco they'd have asked him to leave, in fact they'd have taken him to the nearest border crossing and shoved him across it.

Couldn't help but laugh when he started to talk in some sort of schoolboy gibberish French and the Policeman as calm as anything said in an almost perfect English accent, "Please stop talking to me in French"



I'd like to know where his friends were, because if it were me theres no way I would ever a) let him get into such a state and b) wander off on his own.

Maybe its because I'm older, but I just don't see what the "fun" is about being so pi$$ed you think you are in another country to what you are!!

I used to rep in Tenerife and Gran Canaria, and did a couple of summers working the 'young & lively' market. we were a bit like 18-30, but a little more mainstream. Thousands upon thousands of kids doing what you describe every night, often on organised excursions.

What you see on these programmes is actually pretty mild. People having sex, oral sex, etc wherever and whenever the opportunity presents itself. Drug use was rife - cocaine was the drug of choice in my day but that might have changed. You were in the minority if you didn't do coke.

As for the violence - prostitutes mugging punters is older than the hills: "You wan sucky sucky? Only five mil?". And 'Lucky Lucky' men are another one to watch out for. We used to go past on airport coaches in the early hours and see them target the drunkest blokes, befriend them and walk off with them, with the intention of relieving them of their wallets.

I was attacked twice in Tenerife - one time I fought them off, the other I was in a right state anyway and it was a gang of around 20 locals. Fortunately my girlfriend yelled at them in Spanish, telling them we lived there and we weren't tourists. They backed off but some of my customers had seen it and waded in on my behalf. I was also spiked 4 times and ended up in hospital twice with unknown substances in my system. I've never been a drugs user and reacted badly when spiked.

The bouncers in Tenerife, specifically the Veronica's area, were the worst. They were unregulated and tended to be meatheads from the UK on the run. At the slightest hint of trouble young lads would find themselves launched down stairs or on the end of chains, baseball bats, iron bars, whatever. The NI June marching season was terrible - guaranteed riots every night as various groups clashed.

They were disgusting in the hotels as well. Many times I turned up to work and had to evict a gang of very hungover lads for trashing their rooms and parts of the hotel, or for fighting or abusing other guests. Vomit, blood, semen, urine, faeces, all over the place. A couple of times we had to call the police to get them out.

The most disturbing things were the deaths and rapes. The one I recall most vividly was a 16 year-old who got drunk and got into a car with 4 locals. They drove her out to the wastelands outside Las Americas, gang-raped her, beat her senseless and left her there. Dealt with several deaths, a few lads choked to death in their sleep, a few fell off balconies, and a local who jumped from the 13th floor of the Princesa Dacil hotel in Los Cristianos and landed between two sunbeds with people sunbathing on them, and their kids nearby. Brains and bits of bone and gore splattered everywhere.

This was 11 years ago. To be fair, Veronica's was a uniquely grotesque monster and far more violent than anywhere else I've been on a drinking holiday (Playa Del Ingles, Faliraki, Laganas and others). It's been massively cleaned up since those days.