Winstones: ice cream at Rodborough Common near Stroud

If you’re the sort of person who leaves booking a holiday abroad to the last minute, then this year you’re in luck! As I write, it looks like you’ll be saving your pennies as we bask in yet another mini heatwave.

But, while we may not (yet) be snapping up cheap flights to seek sunnier climes overseas, it appears that those pennies are being spent elsewhere – on ice cream to be precise. Yes, the temperatures may have rivalled those in Ibiza in June (according to the papers), but here in the UK, we’re just not used to such highs. With a distinct lack of swimming pools and air conditioning in most of our homes, what’s a person got to do to cool down? Eat ice cream, apparently. And lots of it! So much so that supermarkets have just reported record ice cream sales and the summer has only just begun.

Mollie Davis from the Winstones Parlour with an ice cream (Image: Sue Bradley) At Warner’s we always see a spike in demand when temperatures get to the mid 20s, and that demand increases exponentially the hotter it gets. But like any food product, not all ice creams are created equally. There’s nothing wrong with stocking your freezer with mass-produced treats to keep the kids happy, but if you want to really enjoy your ice cream, then you’ve got to go local.

Luckily, we do have some genuinely fantastic ice cream producers in the Cotswolds, but perhaps the most well-known is Winstones with its picturesque parlour nestled amongst the wandering cows and horses of Rodborough Common near Stroud.

Celebrating its 100 anniversary this year, it’s a huge local success story. That story began in 1925 when entrepreneur Albert Winstone founded the business to offer cold treats to the golfers and walkers who passed by. Responding to consumer demand for ice cream, Albert managed to acquire a Victorian recipe and after a lot of trial and error, Winstones Cotswold Ice Cream was born.

Today, the parlour attracts around 180,000 visitors a year, and on a busy summer weekend there might be 5,000 people through the door. Those are phenomenal figures for a business that began from the side car of a motorcycle!

Winstones Ice Cream Parlour (Image: Emma Mercer) Four generations later, Winstones continues to be run by Albert’s family, who have undertaken a rebrand and continue to innovate with fresh new flavours – bringing the total to 17 on offer at the parlour – and products catering for 21st century needs, such as lactose-free, celiac and vegan options. However, the ethos of Winstones remains ‘quintessentially Gloucestershire’, with a new partnership for milk to be supplied by Hardwicke-based Jess’s Ladies Organic Dairy Farm, another fantastic local supplier, honey from Stroud and fruit from Herefordshire.

To mark the centenary, they’ve introduced a new flavour – peaches and clotted cream – that, just like all the other ice creams, is made to the same Victorian recipe used by Albert on the very first day Winstones began.

Some things it seems, are just too good to change.

Flavours galore (Image: Emma Mercer)

Best ice cream flavours:

Raspberry Ripple: a more sophisticated incarnation of a childhood favourite, this version is soft and creamy with a decent hit of vanilla and a delicate raspberry sauce rippled throughout.

Honey & Ginger: bridging the gap between ice cream and dessert, this has a subtle sweetness with a pleasing kick of ginger. Definitely one for the grown-ups.

Union Jack: originally created for the Queen’s Jubilee and the Olympics in 2012, this red, white and blue ice cream is an intoxicating mix of blue candyfloss, white vanilla and red cherry sauce.