Ginger nuts are still ginger nuts.

Sandwiches are a thing in UK cities. A big thing, along with coffee, cheese, and vaping. So much vaping.

Sandwiches come slathered with mayonaise, rather than butter. A Liverpool shop offers a sandwich, hot or cold, with five kinds of cheese on it, all at once.

Vegetables are harder to include in the travelers diet. Not wanting to cart a whole lettuce around means buying ready-made salad, usually swimming in mayonaise, housed in single-use plastic, and costlier than a lettuce. Is that the same everywhere?

Ready-made does seem to be the city-centre choice. Tesco super-stores, with over twenty lengthy aisles full of microwavable anything, offer just this as the home cooking section. Sadly, the fruit and vegetables sections are comparable in size.

There’s sections for foods from various countries; all very exciting to a non-cosmopolitan. But what exactly is a Manx egg? One with no tail?

Evidently taste-buds differ. UK picnic bars are mostly puffed rice, with virtually no nuts (not that I would have tried one of course). The cream bun had twenty-eight ingredients! It looked the same as New Zealand’s version.

But they sure know how to do takeaway kebabs. Often it comes in pita bread, with salad (hold the sauce). Most of the places I’ve stayed have not had a kitchen, so the kebab has become the evening meal go-to.

Tourist attractions and guided tours manage customers into spending money at their associate cafes. Connections timings are designed to encourage the tourist to have a coffee while they wait. It’s hard to resist. But the most blatant was the guide in Skye who said there were not many opportunities to get lunch in the village, so best to pre-order with him. Most on the tour bus did. I had a much cheaper soup and bun at a lovely cafe down near the shore.

Single-serve flavoured yoghurt comes in a two-compartment sealed container. One side holds plain yoghurt, the other has the fruit flavoring. The idea is to add the desired amount of flavour into the yoghurt and bin the rest. For the household who has a range of preferences, buy a large container of plain yoghurt and a selection of flavorings.

There’s fun in ordering something just because you’ve never had it before. Doner kebabs can be lamb, beef, chicken or pork, Shish is beef, and Kofta is minced beef or lamb. And then there’s the Manx salted caramel icecream, clearly with a secret ingredient, and the delicious Manx fruit toast, best described as maybe a cross between toast and fruit loaf.

On the Isle of Man three seperate staff members checked my order because I’d said ‘nothing on my chips please’. No salt. No gravy. No vinegar. No garlic sauce. Are you sure? And wedges don’t seem to be a thing, but jacket potatoes come in an astonishing array… mushroom, bacon, tomato, corn, ham etc, all in a variety of cheese bases. Or maybe opt for one of the numerous stand-alone cheese options.

A man from Colby said he’d never heard of colby cheese until he visited New Zealand. He is right. It’s not British, but was first made in Colby, Wisconsin, USA, in 1875.

Fresh milk goes off too quick when travelling. Instead, skim milk powder suffices. I poured the contents of a rather bulky tin into a snaplock plastic bag, to save space. At a park bench, whilst enjoying the glories of autumn colour, a young couple, seeing me spoon a small amount of an unknown white powder into my cup, glanced at each other, grabbed their gear and quickly left the park.

Milk powder is fine, and kebabs lovely, but the yearning for a home-cooked meal of freshly-picked vegetables and proper meat had me drooling as I wandered the lovely Newtownards in Co Down, Ireland. Warm bread smells wafted from proper bakeries, the butcher’s darkly matured beef beckoned, and fresh vegetables waited in baskets at the green grocer’s. She even stocked for Halloween.

In Dublin, vegetable soup came with a ‘slice’ of traditional bread.

And in Galway, there’s takeaways which only stock hot potato chips, along with an array of sauces. No fish or other nonsense here!

There are so many foods to try, but the best discovery of all… ginger nuts are still ginger nuts!