Your article (‘We always bring a teapot’: readers share the unusual items they take on holiday, 5 August) brought to mind a camping trip through France many years ago. Close to Calais, I went to wash up after dinner at the communal basins and next to me was an Englishman on his first evening on holiday. He filled his basin and emptied his cookware, crockery and cutlery into it, only to see two dozen sodden Oxo cubes rise to the surface. He was horrified as the cubes were an essential part of his camping cuisine.
Ron Jacob
London
• My parents’ love of old-fashioned country-style hotels led to a slightly unusual item on their packing list. They never went anywhere without a radiator bleeding key.
Nicola Campbell
Macclesfield, Cheshire
