Ice Cream

I was sitting in Hartley's Beach Cafe at St Bees and looked up at the ice cream on the wall,  noticed the numbers and puzzled what they indicated, was it flavours or sizes, and then belatedly realised it was actually the time.  I wonder how long this ice cream clock has been telling time?  The Hartley's Ice Cream they sell is made to the same recipe as when the founder started out locally in the 1930s selling ice cream from a motorcycle and sidecar and although the number of flavours sold today has increased vanilla still remains the best seller.

I was idly wondering how I could pad out one photograph to make an ABC post about ice cream and then unexpectedly last weekend I was taken to an ice cream farm, Yay, result.  So I take you from a beach cafe on the Cumbrian coast

south to the Cheshire countryside and to something on a far bigger scale, the Cheshire Ice Cream Farm at Tatttenhall.  This also started out as a family business and sold ice cream from the farm shop, fast forward 30 years and next to the unit making lots of ice cream for the retail trade is a large 'Adventure Park'.  Spot half a strawberry to the left?

This is Strawberry Falls part of the ice cream themed adventure golf course which winds around it (I snatched a photo while trying to negotiate the obstacles to pot golf balls). 

Being a sunny bank holiday weekend the Adventure Park was crammed. Apart from adventure golf, a visit to the animals in Fudge Farm the other objective of our visit was the giant Ice Cream Parlour, and yes the long queue meant I had lots of time to make up my mind to what flavour to choose. Unfortunately the ice cream tree

was decorative rather than edible although on a practical note

it does have a temperature gauge.  I believe when the temperature indicator drops from "I'm Melting" to "Snow Time" at the bottom there is a snow explosion from the top accompanied by music. It is timed for every half hour.  Is someone in this picture wondering how to make it happen sooner?

An entry to ABC Wednesday, a journey through the alphabet, this week sojourning at I here. 

I ♡ Ice Cream

This heart shaped ivy growing in St Bees Churchyard caught my interest.  

As indeed does any ice cream van, no matter the season and if it is being sold from a vintage van, irresistible.
This is one of five vintage ice cream vans owned by the Real Dairy Ice Cream Company from the Wirral.  It looks lovingly restored as it even has its make painted on the side - 1938 N1 - the distinctive shape of a Commer van.  A British company that made post office vehicles,  light vans, trucks, military vehicles and buses from 1905-1979.  As part of the Rootes group it was taken over by Chrysler when it continued to  made vehicles under the Dodge badge. 

I had spotted another vintage ice cream van by the Albert Dock earlier in the day when the September morning mist was just starting to clear. This is a 1948 Bradford Jowett which were built in Yorkshire from 1946-1953, its body variants a popular post war choice for a van noted for its sturdiness, stability and economic running.

  Time for an ice cream?

An entry to ABC Wednesday, a journey through the alphabet, this week sojourning at I here. 

Champion Ice Cream

Time for an ice-cream from this cute van parked outside York's Castle Museum (the building used to be a prison in the 18th Century). While waiting for the Ryeburn's ice-cream I read the  notice 

which explains that it is award winning and the van itself is a E83W Fordson Thames originally made as as what it is today ,an ice-cream van, and one of the last of its kind working today. The Fordson Thames were produced in Ford's Dagenham works from 1938-1957 and could be, amongst other things,  flat backed trucks or grocery delivery vans.  This one proudly bears its date of birth

as 1949.  The pitch is a tourist hot spot standing as it does between the two museums and

 Clifford's Tower where I suppose one could test fitness by running up the incline. The tower is a ruined keep and the only remains of York Castle (originally built by William the Conquer in the 11th Century).  Today the ice-cream van stands inside, what would have been in centuries past, a castle, or in the 18th Century a prison complex.

An entry to ABC Wednesday - a journey through the alphabet, this week sojourning at I

Ices

My local ice cream van is Roy's Ices with his 28 great flavours but if I travel to the other side of the bay then I could call by the My-T-Fine. These two vans may even face each other across the water. One in the little coastal village of Bardsea and this one in the seaside resort of Morecambe.

An entry to Signs, Signs