trader | Ice cream

Marvellous Morecambe and its special ice cream van

While out on the road touring Britain last year, I found myself in Lancashire and soon felt right at home. It has an atmosphere that seems hazy, like those of half-memories from a long time ago. I went to the Moors, chased a gypsy caravan and propped up bars in seedy hotels in Blackpool. But it was when I got to Morecambe that I fell into the embrace of a truly retro experience.

There on the promenade, right next to the Midland hotel, was parked Kate in her old Bedford ice cream van, Sunset Ices. Kids ran up to buy Snowball toppers and Oysters and anything which could be dashed up with strawberry sauce.

I went for an Angostura Ice - a vanilla cone with veins of Angostura bitters channeling through it. It tasted like a Caribbean holiday right there in sunny Morecambe.

Kate gets all her ice cream from Wallings Farm down the road and has the promenade as her regular pitch when she\'s not at other events.

We love her because she loves the 1950s and has made of this love a whole business: operating in the ultimate British seaside town, selling all the old favourites (except with real ice cream, not that stanky chemical soft-serve solution) and even using the van as a mobile art gallery.

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