There are places in the World where mosquitoes can be a real pain and you don't know what to do against them.

Scotland is known for that, but out of all my travels (I admit that I have not been everywhere), the worse ones were in the South of France, near the town of Arles… It is right in the middle of the Rhone river delta. These mosquitoes are not very big, but size does not matter in that case. They work in full size squadrons, and there are hundreds of them. They wake up all together around 7pm (just when you start to relax on the patio with your first drink of the evening) and they will not stop pestering you until nightfall.

Every year we try new products with more of less success. This year I decided to not buy the local products but bring my own kit from the UK.

By looking at the range of easily available products, it seemed that Lifesystems products were well regarded by people travelling to remote places. If it is good enough for the rainforest, it should be ok for France.

I got a spray of Expedition 100+ Insect repellent -which is their stronger variant of the product- and a Portable Mosquito Killer device to use inside (and outside… just to try).

When applying the Expedition 100+ repellent you will find the formula quite "sticky", so make sure you spray yourself outside and well away from anything you want to use. The bright side is that the smell is not unpleasant and not strong at all (unlike some other products that make you smell like a chemical lab).

The brochure says it will last up to ten hours, I did not have to test it that long, but I can say that it was lasting easily more than five or six hours.

The result is that I only got hit a few times, which is an extremely good score for me. This product is coming back with me next year without a question!

The Portable Mosquito Killer is a very small battery operated device that propels a sent that mosquitoes don't like.

In the past I used the well proven smoke coils. These coils do the job but the smell is not always pleasant and you cannot obviously place them inside in a tent.

The Mosquito Killer device is a mini fan (absolutely noiseless) that spreads an odourless scent for you. The cartridge is replaceable (it should last about one week of eight hours night - which is when you would tend to use it).

Put it inside a tent, it kept mosquitoes well at bay, but that was expected (after the successful Expedition spray test, I started to trust Lifesystems product marketing brochure).

But as an "out of scope" test, I placed it under my chair outside in the evening and was not "wearing" any other repellent. The mosquitoes left me almost completely unmarked, but was not protecting people next to me. It shows that you can also successfully use it outside as an individual protection system.

As a conclusion, those products can easily be found in outdoor shops and they do what it says on the tin. They should be put into the "no brainer" box of things to take with you when you go into mosquito country.