AIBU to think you should be able to travel in and around our capital city without getting flea bites!

[MimiGC]

My daughter and I spent two days at the end of the last week travelling in, around and across London - on a total of 8 trains. We also went to Greenwich Theatre. Over the weekend, we both have found numerous flea bites on our legs. ( I assume they are flea bites, as they are in clusters and itch like crazy.)
I have traveled in and around London all my life and been to many theatres and never experienced this before. Has anyone else ever experienced this?

I’ve travelled daily on the train and the underground for years and have never experienced flea bites. They’re far more likely to have come from unclean accommodation

We haven’t been in any unclean accommodation.

They're probably bed bugs rather than flea bites. Unless you were sat near a dog or cat at any stage. There was quite an outbreak of bed bugs, was it last year? Fairly recently anyway.

Whatever critter they were yes, you should be able to travel in London without getting bitten by something like this. I lived in London for a few years and have spent many many day trips and weekends in the place and have never been bitten by anything!

I don’t think I’ve ever knowingly had flea or bed bug bites, and I live in London. But I suppose whilst ideally you should be able to live in a modern city without being bitten, it’s just one of those things. Anywhere where large numbers of people from all over and dogs, which are allowed more places than they used to be, sharing confined spaces I suppose you risk there being fleas or bugs - especially as they’ve become largely immune to many treatments and can be nearly impossible to get rid of.

Looking at images of both, I’d say they look a lot more like flea bites than bed bug bites. Also, are bed bugs active outside of beds? We came home to our own beds each night.

To be fair they could be any sort of insect bite. I live in London, and have never been bitten when out and about on that sort of outing. It has been milder recently so could have been mossies, midges or any other type of insect.

We went to London weekend before last and dd2 got bites on her leg. Nobody has any since getting home and she shared a bed with her sister who hasn’t got any. Hotel was clean (very nice hotel), but we didn’t use the tube. Did use a standard train so maybe home journey, but I couldn’t figure out how/when she got them. Didn’t think much of it until seeing your post.

They could be from other insects, but we both only have bites on our legs, top and bottom, which suggests to me that we got them whilst sitting down, not wandering around. I could be wrong, but either way it’s annoying, as they really itch and it kept waking me up last night.

This is strange! I've lived in London for years and take public transport daily, and have never had any kind of insect bites. Could it be from something else?

12 years and counting. Public transport daily. Never had this issue.
Were you wearing shorts?

Where did you stay overnight?

Did you sit in a park? Midgie bites?
Highly unlikely to be fleas!

Have you checked your beds for bed bugs? Do you have any pets?

Did you have skirts on?

obviously some people take dogs etc on trains. And some put them on seats.
i had flea bites from caravan park where they had been in sofas.
We used to get then relatively often from the childrens centre either the carpets or bean bags. There was a cat.

I've never been bitten while travelling around London or in a theatre, but you may want to mention it to the theatre, just in case there is an issue. I know there was a thing with the Eurostar a few years ago with bed bugs on their seats, but we also travelled then with no issue.

We're just back from a few days in London. Used public transport extensively, ate out for every meal, visited multiple museums, galleries etc and stayed in a budget hotel.

Couldn't believe how efficient, friendly, clean and tidy everything was. No bites of any sort.

I lived in London for 25 years and got flea bites twice from (I think) the tube.

Stripped off in the hall, clothes straight in the wash and got straight in the shower.

We live in London and are all over the place and have never had this happen.

But I do think the very wet mild weather is contributing to more insect life than is usual at this time of year. We had something that looked like a mosquito in the house the other day and we put a spider that I swear was the size of a golf ball outside last night. I could see that something like fleas could theoretically exist in a theatre or tube seat.

As a pp asked, did you spend any time sitting in the park?

More likely the theatre. Been traveling on the tube/train for 35yrs and never once had a flea bite.

On an average day the population of london is 10m. I have no idea how many insects reside in the capital but let's assume it's a lot. Who's responsibility do you think it is to stop insects biting you?

Bed bugs can live anywhere soft and warm they can hide. So if they happened to be transported onto a train, they could technically hide in the seats and bite you while you're sitting down. I live in London, and also haven't encountered this before, so my guess is it's something you got on a specific train.

I've had bed bugs twice before. Things that stood them apart from flea bites - they were bigger and I had two or three close together. They were really itchy, but specifically at night (apparantly this is so you scratch at night and lure them back to you). They didn't bother me in the day as much. And, they took ages to go away - weeks to disappear.

Ditto.

Must be from somewhere else.

Possibly even your own home OP if you both have it.

Did you not put the drops on the back of your necks before you left? Tut tut…

No shorts (February) and we returned home both nights, so no hotels.

No sitting in parks, just a cafe at lunchtime.

I am on and off tubes, trains and buses, and various theatres, all the time.

Have never had any bites that could have been attributed to any of this.