In reply to Mick Ryan - UKClimbing.com:
It's the small ones you need to watch out for, so easy to miss particularly if you've never come across them before.
We had a terrifying experiance with ticks in the Hebrides (Pabbay) only becoming aware of them after a few days of shorts wearing through long grasses etc. I still have scars from the bites. Fortunately, Lyme symptoms didn't prevail, although the dormancy issue is worrying me . We had foolishly left our tent doors open a lot and found they migrated from the grass and clothes into the tent and sleeping bags. Nightmare of itching and scratching. Once we realised what they were and removed countless from the tent inner netting with climbing tape, we spent the rest of the week meticulously tick checking each other. We returned to Pabbay later that year after a trip to Mingulay (tickless) to find an even greater problem....so much so that we camped on the beach to be away from the grasses and the dreaded beasts. Camping on the beach reduced the tick invasion but the weeks advancing tides mean't the available sand for 1/2 a dozen tents got ridiculously small. Comically, some of us were woken with sea water lapping up into the tents. The boat arrived just in time.
I have heard they are off the Island now along with the sheep.
It's good to have some clarification on removal rather than the plethora of old wives tales...iodine, lighters, clockwise, anticlockwise, suffocate with vaseline.....blah, blah.
Nasty things...I think I'll be wearing long trousers more this summer.