A popular seaside town which welcomes in thousands of tourists each year has more to offer than just picturesque views and clear blue seas. The Cornish town of St Ives, famous for its scones and seafood also boasts some of the best ice cream in the country, according to a recent guide.
According to a recent BBC Food guide, Moomaid of Zennor in St Ives is the third best ice cream parlour in the UK, giving the swarms of tourists who head there each summer another reason to visit. In its listing, the guide said: “West Cornwall is a battleground for ice cream wars, but this classy parlour wins with its imaginative flavours. Order the espresso martini flavour for a coffee kick, or Shipwreck Extra Stormy, a heavenly concoction of salted caramel ice cream with chunks of honeycomb and chocolate.”
Moomaid of Zennor makes its ice cream on a “family run dairy farm perched on the cliffs between Zennor Hill and The Atlantic Ocean.”
It produces luxury ice cream free from preservatives and aricicial colours or flavourings before transporting its produce to one of its parlous in St Ives to be enjoyed by locals and tourists alike.
Describing the process it goes through to make its product, the company website states: “Once our herd of Friesian Holstein Moomaids have finished grazing on the cliffs, they are walked in to be milked as they always have for generations.
“But now their milk continues its journey just a few yards further across the yard to the old dairy where we now make our ice cream.
“Here it is combined with Rodda’s Cornish Clotted Cream or Double Cream, using state of the art Italian machinery and a little bit of Italian know how.”
St Ives is often dubbed one of the UK’s most successful tourist destinations, with the small town popular with millionaires and ordinary folk alike.
But such is the popularity of the small town, the impact of tourism has seen it labelled as “patient zero” for over-tourism in the UK.
Tourism generates an estimated £85 million a year for the region – a significant sum for a town of less 11,000 people.
However the surge in popularity has come at a cost, with rising house prices ruling the out the chance of owning a property for many local people.
Earlier this year, one resident told the Guardian how the increased use of sites such as Airbnb saw her landlord make her homeless in order to cash in on the site.
The resident, known as Lizzy, labelled the town as “patient zero of British overtourism” claiming that it is “just a rich man’s playground now”.
She added: “I was surviving, just getting by.
“Whereas now I live my life. It’s given me the freedom to be able to save the money I would have been spending to go travelling and do the things I want to do. I’ll probably end up in the future looking at something like a bit of land in Portugal.”