Mary, Mungo and Midges

Scotland....
still part of the United Kingdom and my location for the past week for an early annual vacation with the family.

It is a magical place.

Mountains in and out of the mist, lochs and glens in and out of the mist and ravenous tiny, wee insects, something certainly to be missed.

Those pesky midges.

We giggled a bit on our first morning in Scotland seeing an obviously seasoned hill walker shrouded in a fine mesh veil over his head and face rather like a shy bride but for the rest of our week our admiration only grew for the man as we found ourselves pursued relentlessly by the beasties.Hiding behind an improvised net curtain or fly screen was inspirational.

Frantic scratching and itching gave, perhaps, a millisecond of relief from the incessant irritation and we had to resort to wholesale and mutual dabbing with a roll-on type insect repellent. The small cylindrical container with the chemical deterrent had a knack of becoming lost in a cagoule pocket, in the folds of a rucksack or disappearing under the car seat. These events incited huge panic amongst our party.

There were brief moments of escape behind the firmly fastened doors and windows of our vacation timber lodge but we had to draw lots to see which hapless individual had to go retrieve any items, such as food, from the car parked just thirty feet away. In the process we felt like we were sending a family member outside to confront a herd of zombies.

Other apparent midge free zones were to be found out in the middle of Loch Lomond on a water taxi ride, in a coffee shop of extortionate pricing (Mocha £3.10), at an altitude above 3000 feet (approx 1000 metres) where, according to my wife and daughter, the intrepid climbers of Ben Lomond, the sleat and snow in mid June were just too much for the creatures to maintain a direct course to extract blood.

I felt almost justified wandering into a McDonalds fast food restaurant to benefit from the rarified atmosphere, oh, and of course McDonalds has a Scottish Heritage making it permissible .

The week was very active with adventures on mountain bikes and in walking gear.

The changeable weather and threat of perforation by midges, should any bare skin be exposed, had no real impact on our determined pursuit of recreation and leisure after a very busy first half of the year in work and home life.

As that great son of Scotland, Billy Connolly said, "There is no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong choice of clothing".

I am at that age, early fifties when I have an over-active interest in and fascination of the climate.

Scotland presents a wonderful opportunity to witness this at close quarters.

In the floor of the glacial valley that contains Loch Lomond, (the largest area of freshwater in the UK), there can, in the course of a few minutes, be alternate scorching sunshine, drizzle and torrential rain, significant variations in temperature, howling gale and complete stillness. For example, a rainbow suddenly appeared to us, flat to the surface of the black cold water only to evaporate within seconds. It was a marvellous, fleeting vision against the backdrop of steep pine clad hillsides and, in the distance, some residual snow filled deep gullies that had so far resisted the spring and summer thaw. On that theme a local resident was heard to say "I love summer in Scotland....it is the best day of the whole year"

We could carry out our own weather forecasting quite easily.

If we could see the upper slopes and summit of Ben Lomond from the log cabin window, looking north, then we could usually count on a few hours of reasonably predictable weather. Just to be safe we could also see through to the Loch shore itself. There was either a glassy sheen of perfect calm on the water or a maelstrom whipped up by winds funnelled through the Glen so that the handful of boats, at anchor, danced around with the clink, clink of masthead gear in accompaniment.

Most of these sights were, unfortunately, viewed through a strange shimmering.

We had seen this before whilst on a Mediterranean holiday as a heat haze effect but in Scotland you can attribute this to the clouds of midges just gathering in the Highlands for another feast on the oh, so foolish, English tourists.