I spent 25 years working for Outward Bound at their LochEil centre, Fort Willam as a mountaineering and sailing Instructor and then another 15 years as a keen fly fisher. I still live here.
I can tell you the following for sure:
Bright sunshine; no midgies
Any breeze: no midgies
Wind and rain, no midgies
before May, (generally): no midgies
After September: (generally): no midgies
Dull, windless evening or early morning, in the Highlands: plenty of midgies.
So, you can see that during any week or two, even in the summer here, its quite possible for there to be NO midgie problem at all.
Avon-skin-so soft is a myth! Deet based repellents are the only things that work (a bit).
One of the reasons that confusion abounds is that there is never a classic, consistent midgie attack: it can be mild, or bad, or very bad, or terrifying, thus when folks try a repellent during a mild attack they think the stuff has worked because they were'nt too badly affected. The reality is that the creatures never really got going!
Why do you think there are upwards of 100 different repellents? Because non of them work!
See here, Avon-skin-so-soft was tested and found to be useless and note the obvious! - Avon do NOT promote there product as an insect repellent - if it worked, then they would!
https://www.consumerreports.org/insect- ... bug-spray/
Remember the 'Midgie eaters' of a few years ago/ (A machine which you positioned in your garden, it gave out C02 gas that was supposed to mimic the breathing out of a mammal and thus attracted midgies to a blood meal). For a couple of years here it was the talk of the town. Lots of folks here bought them for a couple of hundred quid and raved about their effectiveness - the effect of the 'Emperors new Clothes' struck again and if you did'nt own one you were considered to be backward!
Guess what? You couldn't buy one anywhere these days even if you wanted to - they didnt work, they never did - folks just wanted them to and thus convinced themselves they did!
The Avon stuff is the same thing - absolutely NO component of this skin softener has any scientific anti-insect repelent properties, it can't work! All the gubbins you read about the Royal Marines using it is just tosh I am afraid.
Buy a midgie head-net, some DEET based repelent and keep your eye on the forecast weather conditions.
Cheers, Terry
we start our journey in newcastle drive 1 week the east cost up over Durness west cost down isle of sky and then one week in the loneliness ( the midges and us) 
