Bats roost anywhere that appears dark and safe, including inside a bra, a British woman has found from personal experience.

Hotel receptionist Abbie Hawkins did not detect the flying creature secure within the padded cup of her underwear for five hours.

Hawkins says she arrived at her hotel, near the Norwich international airport, when she felt something akin to a vibration from her mobile phone. 

The vibrations would not stop even at lunch-break, so she decides to investigate and out came the little creature.

"I just lost my breath when I saw it and I did not know what it was at first," she says. Her general manager freed the bat in the hotel garden, The Telegraph reports.

"I keep thinking how could I have not known it was there?" Hawkins said. "I will certainly be checking my bras every morning from now on." Apparently the bra had been hanging on her washing line the previous night and she had picked it up in the morning before her bath.

Jaime Eastham of the Bat Conservation Trust says they had never heard of a bat being found in a bra before.