THE plethora of cooking programmes on TV would indicate that we are a nation of food lovers ever willing to explore new tastes. Unfortunately the British abroad soon dispel this image. In my experience we like what we like and we know how it should be done.

Some years ago, I shared a dining room table at a hotel in Croatia with a couple of Bet Lynch type ladies from Fleetwood, and night after night they insisted on having a plain omelette.

After a few nights I asked them: “Don’t you get fed up with that, why don’t you try something different?”

One of them indicated they preferred their arrangement but qualified this by saying: “Anyway we don’t want any of that foreign muck."

This sort of attitude is all too common. The first priority of many UK tourists is to find out which cafes serve good British food and a “cup of tea made like we do it at home”.

VJ Connor, Bishop Auckland.