“CHIPPY stop here,” says a homemade sign beside the road near a campsite in Swaledale.

The sign was presumably erected to attract the attention of the mobile fish and chip shop which visits Dales communities once a week.

Richard and Pauline Ramsay have been manning the van for more than 30 years and have only missed a handful of runs because of the weather in that time.

Perhaps they could do a new line in ferrying teachers to school.

The time of the van’s arrival obviously depends on how busy they’ve been in the previous villages and people tend to get there in good time to avoid disappointment, meaning the wait becomes something of a social event, all-be-it with everyone staring hopefully up the road as they chat.

Anyone who has used the van will know they are among the finest fish and chips ever to be served from van or shop.

They would taste all the better as a child because the van didn’t get to our village until after 8.30pm, meaning you were so hungry that a raw shubunkin and chips would have tasted delicious – and a late bedtime was potentially on the cards, if those cards were played right – be quiet, eat slowly, hide if possible.

While the fish and chips were delicious, I remember the cans of pop being a bit warm.

I’m not complaining as I was just glad not to be drinking Kia-Ora, and I can imagine it’s difficult to keep things cool in a van full of boiling oil.

There is also a train of thought that Panda Cola was brewed to be served tepid.

If your lobbying for a chippie tea was unsuccessful, you could sometimes get a free bag of scraps from the van if you asked nicely or looked hungry enough.

When the pleading did work, the walk home from the van with a carrier bag full of deep fried food for all the family was probably the same feeling felt by hunters returning from the Dales savanna with a dead wildebeest over their shoulder.