✈️ Episode 8: The Ice Cream Appreciation Society

✈️ Episode 8: The Ice Cream Appreciation Society

It’s not a holiday without an ice cream. It doesn’t matter if you’re in Corfu, Capri, or Cleethorpes, sooner or later, someone’s going to say, “Shall we get an ice cream?” Usually that is me… and just like that, the day feels complete.

Back in Greece, when I was a kid, my go to was always a ‘Feast’. Same wrapper, same branding as home, but never the same flavour. Maybe it was the heat, maybe the smell of the sea in the air, maybe just the magic of being on holiday, but a Greek Feast always tasted better.

At home, ice cream has become a bit of a family tradition. One Father’s Day, my wife had “Ice Cream Appreciation Society” t-shirts made for me and my daughter. We all wore them proudly to Helmsley, North Yorkshire, where there is the Ryeburn Dairy, still one of our regular favourite stops to this day. Whilst we were stood eating our ice cream there, we were getting looks at our t-shirts and a sweet old lady plucked up the courage and came to ask if there was a convention on or something… no, just us with our t-shirts on…

In more recent times, when my daughter was trudging through her Duke of Edinburgh expeditions, we made a ‘ritual’ of nipping to Pomeroy Farm, somewhere in the hills around Matlock/Buxton in Derbyshire, afterwards for a celebratory scoop. A little ice cream as a medal, a badge of achievement, after all I had earned it… I mean, she had earned it.

Travel only adds to the story. In Italy, Gabriella’s in Vico Equense has become a family staple, an award winning gelateria that demands a visit (or two) every time we’re near Naples or Sorrento… I may have been twice on this trip so far.

On the very first EDCCooperative international camp, where we travelled to Italy, Fior di Gelato in Parma turned into a highlight, shared with friends and fellow travellers.

In another EDCCooperative first, a trip from an airport… after a 20 hour delay… ending up at a different airport, hundreds of miles away from our destination… we found ourselves that close to the Russian border, we were told to put our phones in airplane mode the whole time we were there… but… we found a tiny icecream hut, literally in the middle of nowhere, at the end of the driveway to someone’s house… they made their own icecream, two flavour choices… if they’d made any, sometimes they’d get too drunk to make it… luckily, I got to try some and the two ladies were lovely… and not drunk  

And then there’s home turf. Whenever friends visit me in Manchester, I take them to Ginger’s Comfort Emporium, hidden inside the legendary Afflecks Palace, for what I swear is the best ice cream in the city, if not the UK… it’s that good. Sharing that place, surrounded by friends and fellow cooperators, feels just as good as discovering a new gelateria abroad.

As a little side quest fact… did you know that Manchester is widely credited with inventing the ice cream cone? In 1901, a chap named Antonio Valvona, an Italian living in the Ancoats area of the city, patented a device for baking biscuit cups to hold ice cream. His invention not only transformed the way we enjoy a scoop but also symbolised the legacy of Manchester’s Italian “Little Italy,” where immigrant families built a thriving ice cream tradition… maybe that’s why it’s in my blood..? 

But honestly, ice cream doesn’t need sunshine to work its magic. Sometimes it’s a rainy day by the North Sea, and a cone from Di Meo’s in Whitley Bay turns the outing into something special. That’s the power of it, ice cream doesn’t just sweeten the moment, it fixes it in your memory.

For me, ice cream has become the unofficial index of a trip. The flavour changes, the setting changes, but the feeling is the same, joy, nostalgia, and just a little bit of mess running down your wrist.

So here’s my question, what is your best ice cream memory on holiday and does it still taste the same at home?

Also… I’ll let you join my Ice cream appreciation society if you want to grab an amazing scoop when you’re in Manchester, just give me a shout… it’s rumoured that I know a coffee spot or two.