My petite yet perfectly formed friend revealed what her father gets up to now he’s retired. He had worked variously as a rep for a champagne vineyard, a whisky distillery and as a wine merchant. He’s a cultured fellow who travels a lot. He loves ice cream and will regularly drive 30km to visit a decent gelateria. She rolls her eyes.
‘40km’, he chips in from the barbeque, smiling.
Sound familiar?
The sign outside Auchentullich Farm Shop on the A82 Loch Lomond side, offers ‘Coffee. Ice cream made with our own milk,’ and ‘Logs’. This manages to be both alluring and understanding of human needs. A swift deceleration and gearing 5 down to 2 with a sharp turn will bring your van into the carpark. Or into the path of a speeding log lorry or drifting motorhome.
The farm shop is a tastefully converted byre. Not the repurposed agri shed that farm shops used to be, nor a huge modern hanger/supermarket like certain places on the A66. Auchentullich Farm Shop is in fact a well-stocked and fairly priced deli. Inside is a spacious double height room with restored original trusses that is well presented but not overly so. The poured concrete floor and stone walls are attractively bare. It’s a shop you actually want to shop in. There’s a log burner going. Above it, scrawled on a blackboard by a person (Katie Morag?) who was no doubt annoyed by distracted visitors who might put their hand or even sit on a red-hot iron stove, has written, ‘Hot. HOT. BURNIE !!!’
The shop sells fresh fruit and veg, classy things to eat and drink, bread and baked goods. They will also make you a coffee. All prices are reasonable and considering the other choice locally: Dumbarton services, you might want to get yourself or someone else a nice bar of chocolate or bottle of gin here. Auchentullich Farm Shop has decent bread and cakes which always seem to be gone by mid-afternoon. A sign of quality. The takeaway coffee is not bad at all.
But I really need to talk about the ice cream counter. There are up to 12 flavours, reasonably inventive (Pumpkin Pie) but not crazed, cones, tubs, waffle cones with or without chocolate dip as you prefer. Ice cream made here with their own farm milk. I think I mentioned it already.
I asked for one scoop. My needs are simple. The efficient woman on the counter who is running the whole place and making the coffees forced a vast amount of ice cream into my cone, then more on top. They understand. It was £2.95 and superb. Not too sweet or full of chemical stuff. Home-made. I’m sure I mentioned it already.
There’s a pleasantly basic seating area outside with tables but I wander about with my ice cream. It’s a working farm with a nearby towering slurry pit, signed, ’Private, Danger’ etc but the gate is open as a pickup has just gone in. A tourist couple wander through, circumnavigating the slurry pit and spiky agricultural machinery, captivated by their phones and ice creams. I go back in and warn the woman on the counter. She makes the simple, wordless, well-known international sign for ‘Tourists, wandering round a potentially fatal bottomless slurry pit. Not looking where they are going. What can you do?’
In Scotland there is no such thing as bad weather, only the wrong time for eating ice cream. Which is never. Especially if you buy it at the Auchentullich Farm Shop. Worth it from 40km.
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