'Wild' camping and mice

tricky dick

Guest
Hello everyone

I was given this site because we were talking to a friend about wild camping in Scotland (i.e. not on recognised sites), but it seems to be a general site about 'fun' motorhoming ~ absolutely fine, but is there any sort of 'official' list about where is possible to wild camp / or recommendations / good places etc. Sorry cannot find anything here, though there is some limited conversation about this.

Another point entirely. Anybody got experience / good ideas about keepiong mice out of engines / vans. We have just had our van ~ a Murvi Picollo on a Fiat ducato ~ serviced and the garage found four dead mice in the engine air filter.

Thanks
 
Doesn't your van have a CAT alystic convertor :dance::dance::dance: thought thats what they were for lol
 
If you head in this direction Wild Camping Sites you can browse the threads posted about wild camping spots.

This is not exhaustive - there are many more spots available for England, Wales and Scotland if you sign up as a full member for £15 per annum.

Then you can download a set of POI (point of interest files) showing the locations of almost 4,000 wild camping places and pub stopovers. These files can be used with Google Earth, Autoroute and most makes of sat nav.

A sound investment at less than one night's site fees :)

Regards

Chris
 
tricky dick said:
Hello everyone

I was given this site because we were talking to a friend about wild camping in Scotland (i.e. not on recognised sites), but it seems to be a general site about 'fun' motorhoming ~ absolutely fine, but is there any sort of 'official' list about where is possible to wild camp / or recommendations / good places etc. Sorry cannot find anything here, though there is some limited conversation about this.

Another point entirely. Anybody got experience / good ideas about keepiong mice out of engines / vans. We have just had our van ~ a Murvi Picollo on a Fiat ducato ~ serviced and the garage found four dead mice in the engine air filter.

Thanks
Click to expand...
tricky the engine mice are harmless, its the mice that get in your blinds that are dangerous we had three blind mice in our camper and only because the farmers wife where we were staying cut off thier tails with a carving knife saved us, red ted
 
PMSL @ Red Ted. Silly bugger.

To answer the OP... Paid up members get the POI download of wild camping spots (at least I think you have to be a paid member to get access too it). That Might be what you are looking for.
 
Hi and Welcome to the site!! :wave:

On behalf of the more sensible members amongst us, I'd like to offer an apology for the "less than useful" answers to your question about mice. It must have given you a bad impression of us all, but I can assure you that the silly ones are in a minority here.

I have suffered with rodent problems in the past and have found a foolproof remedy. I find that as long as I don't let my speed drop below 25mph, the little critters find it impossible to jump aboard. Hope this helps?
 
A friend suggested to take a little bit of masking tape and expose a small rectangular area of metal about 1 inch square near where your mice are coming in or up into the engine compartment....spray it with carpet glue and then liberally add poison powder onto the glue with a well dipped small paintbrush....I have no idea if it would work though....nor have I tried it (yet).

After I posted this suggestion...I thought about it and decided if it ever came to it I would try this....my idea would be to buy a cheap comb and take a section of it and glue it to the wall of the engine compartment near the ingress point. I would then add to the combs a small piece of the solid mice poison bait that comes in the box traps you buy over the counter....then if it fell off or got wet it would be easy enough to keep and eye on and replace as needed....meanwhile any mice that feed are supposed to head for water and die afterwards.
 
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Rat poison will do the job, but it may take 48 hours or more before it kills the rat or mouse, in which time they will still have had time to cause damage to your wiring and any plastic components. This won't be of much use if parked in a wilding spot (where they will be attracted by the cosy warmth of an engine bay) unless they gorge themselves on sufficient poisonous material to satisfy their appetite before following their natural tendency to chew on plastics. This of course also relies on them finding the poison bait before they find any plastic insulation etc. BTW rats teeth grow constantly at a surprisingly fast rate, so they must continue to gnaw at things in order to reduce their size, which means that it isn't only hunger that drives them.

My house is pretty remote and surrounded on three sides by woodland, so I deal with the problem regularly, especially in the colder winter months. I do this by maintaining a minimum amount of poison in a number of "bait stations" around my outbuildings. I find that this, along with my cat (plus owls and buzzards!), always keeps the problem at bay and I rarely see any signs of rodents. If I forget to check my bait stations for too long and subsequently see signs of rats or mice within a vehicle, I soon control them by laying highly effective traps at various points inside (obviously where the cat or birds etc. can't get to) The best attractant for mice on your traps is peanut butter BTW.

So long as I keep to this easy routine, I rarely have any problems, although I have had a couple of instances where my vehicle has been immobilised because of vital cables being chewed (in one case, neither myself or an AA mechanic could spot the damage, which was eventually found by stripping out the dashboard). Don't forget also the very real fire-risk of damaged cables, although don't have nightmares!

Luckily, I've never had the problem when parked away from home, but as I've said, poison may be too slow in dealing with any rodents in those cases. You can buy battery-operated mice-repellents that may do the trick, but personally I've never tried them. I found this example on eBay....

Battery Powered Ultra Sonic Rodent Repeller Deterrent Mice Rat Mouse Repellent | eBay
 
Hi hope you enjoy Scotland as for mice this can be a really expensive problem I'm assuming the mice probably got into the air filter while the van was parked/stored. The sonic device mentioned I can't comment on but mains powered Do work a friend with the same problem with mice placed one in his garage and they left never to return
 
scampa said:
Hi and Welcome to the site!! :wave:

On behalf of the more sensible members amongst us, I'd like to offer an apology for the "less than useful" answers to your question about mice. It must have given you a bad impression of us all, but I can assure you that the silly ones are in a minority here.

I have suffered with rodent problems in the past and have found a foolproof remedy. I find that as long as I don't let my speed drop below 25mph, the little critters find it impossible to jump aboard. Hope this helps?
Click to expand...

and you are in that minority lol
 
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