Ah, a cuppa comfort in a foreign field

YOU might be packing up your troubles and suntan lotion in your kit bag before heading off on holidays, but you certainly don’t forget to stash a box of teabags and some Taytos in as well.

A survey of 1,000 British and Irish customers of retail chain Iceland reveals that 82% of us will not leave the country without at least one edible home comfort tucked away in our luggage, no matter how exotic or luxurious the destination.

Whether it’s Paris or pasta-loving Italy, Greece or some Turkish delights, we just won’t travel unless we have a feed of sausages and rashers stashed in our luggage or a brown soda loaf with lashing of good old fashioned butter least we starve to death or die of homesickness .

Teabags were named as the number one favourite food for any foreign trip, with 93% of people surveyed admitting to packing a holiday supply.

Budget Travel marketing manager Niamh Hayes said Irish travellers would pack the kitchen sink if they could. While she agreed that tea, sausages, biscuits and cereals would certainly make the top 10 list, she said bread, bacon, butter, Taytos and Cadbury’s chocolate would all feature on a must-have food item list for any Irish holiday-maker.

“We have heard from some of our reps that there is usually a very strong waft of bacon frying from the apartments for the first couple of days after arrival,” Ms Hayes added.

A spokesperson for Iceland said the survey showed that thousands of people are “breakfast smuggling” before heading abroad.

Many people do struggle to find food abroad that suits every member of the family so they often find it a real lifesaver to have a few familiar brands tucked away,” the spokesperson said.

Some of the more unusual concealed cuisine confessions unearthed in the survey include an American shopper who took two frozen turkeys home to Chicago in her suitcase, in time for a Thanksgiving dinner and a Scottish customer who packed six of her favourite Chow Mein flavour Pot Noodles on a holiday of a lifetime to China.

You can just picture it; reclining by the pool, cocktail in one hand, bag of Taytos in the other. . . roll on Santa Ponsa.