'Black Country battered chips were the best I've ever tasted!' Visitor explains why he loves our local delicacy

Paul Brown travelled down to the Black Country from his home in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, as part of his travels exploring the UK canal network.

He was blown away by the region's waterways – but his most fulsome praise came for our delicacy of battered chips.

Here is a letter he sent into the Express & Star postbag:

A recent exploration of the canal network started with a delicious tray of orange chips from a shop on Great Bridge Street followed by a climb up the locks on the canal through to Galton Bridge.

I have to comment that the Black Country chips in light batter were the most tasty chips I have ever sampled.

They are clearly a local delicacy which I loved and they deserve to be better publicised.

I greatly enjoyed the visit. The scenery along the way is pleasant and at one point there was a heron standing on the canal bank so it is obviously clean enough to support a population of fish.

Also notable were the many mooring posts between the locks and that the main line of the canal is very wide, presumably having been built to accommodate commercial boats waiting to enter the various docks for loading. This rather suggests that it would be a suitable venue for a boat rally.

In any case this area is a leisure venue which deserves better publicity.

Returning to the subject of food, there appears to a famine of lardy cake in the area which I regard as an absolute tragedy. Probably it was invented as a way of including a few extra calories in a piece of fruit loaf to keep up the energy levels of the workers in the local coal mine or iron works and is not the ultimate in healthy eating today but it remains a very tasty food.

Paul Brown, Sheffield