The parlour
An ice-cream parlour is six things in a small pink building: the counter, the flavours, the tubs, the cart, the table and the back room on a winter Saturday. Each has a page with what it costs and how it works, and a scoop is the same price in July as in January.
01
The parlour on Mumbles Road: a cabinet of sixteen flavours, twenty seats at the window and the counter, a bench outside facing the bay, and the back room behind the glass where the ice cream is made. One scoop £3.20, two £4.80, three £6.20; dogs welcome with a free dog scoop; open every day in summer.
One scoop £3.
02
Thirty-two flavours made from Gower milk and cream, sorbets and oat-milk ices: the classics (vanilla with real pods, dark chocolate, strawberry), the Welsh ones (bara brith, Welsh cake, honey from Bishopston, Penderyn and raisin), the fruit sorbets, and the ones Ffion is trying this month. Sixteen are in the window each day by a rotation; the flavours page shows today's and filters by vegan, gluten-free or nut-free.
Every flavour is the same price: one scoop £3.
03
Take it home: a 500ml tub for £7.50 or a litre for £12 of anything in the window, packed in a cool bag that keeps it frozen for an hour and a half, or any of the thirty-two with a day's notice; a five-litre catering tub for a party for £45 with the next day's notice. Order on the order page and collect from the end of the counter without queuing.
500ml £7.
04
The cart is a 1960s Italian tricycle with a pink-and-white canopy, eight flavours you choose from the thirty-two, cones, cups and napkins, and two of us scooping: two hours and up to a hundred scoops for £395, £2.80 a head beyond that, £90 an extra hour. Weddings, birthdays, school fairs and company days within an hour of Mumbles, April to October; the cart page says whether your date is free.
Two hours and a hundred scoops £395; each scoop over a hundred £2.
05
At the table: six sundaes in tall glasses, from a knickerbocker glory to the Mumbles Mess with Gower strawberries, from £7.50, and four Belgian waffles made to order with ice cream and toppings, from £8.50; a hot chocolate made with the same chocolate as the chocolate ice cream; a children's sundae for £5. Vegan and gluten-free versions of most.
Sundaes £7.
06
On Saturday mornings from October to March the back room becomes a classroom: three hours with Ffion, six people at most, how a custard base works, how to balance sugar so it scoops, a sorbet, and two flavours you design, churn and take home in tubs. £45 a head, £25 for a child over eight with an adult, gift vouchers available; private sessions for six for £240.
The Saturday school £45 a head, a child over eight with an adult £25, a private session for up to six £240, a gift voucher for any amount.
How it is made
Whole milk and double cream from a herd at Reynoldston, collected on Mondays and Thursdays. In August that is fourteen hundred litres a month, and the farm plans its year around us.
The custard bases are cooked in the afternoon and rest overnight in the cold room, because a base that has rested churns smoother. Churning starts at seven; the window is full by eleven.
The oat-milk ices and the sorbets are made first thing on clean machines, kept at one end of the cabinet and scooped with their own scoops. The allergen card on the counter lists what is in all thirty-two.
Ours is about twenty-five per cent air; supermarket tubs can be a hundred. That is why a scoop here weighs more, melts slower and costs what it costs. We weigh a scoop on the first shift to check.
The flavours page shows today's sixteen from the thirty-two with the vegan, gluten-free and nut-free ones marked. Order a tub to collect without queuing, book the striped cart for a wedding, or a place at the Saturday school, on one form.
