The sweet treat every ice-cream-lover should add to their bucket list

"Do you mean you went for a swim?" I ask her, astounded. It's autumn. An Irish autumn, not an Australian one. I'm wearing jeans, boots and a padded jacket, which admittedly, I keep having to zip and unzip as the capricious Irish sun plays hide and seek.

"Yes," she replies, "I go in at least three times a week, all year around."

I look at the steel-grey water in the harbour and tell her I can't imagine.

"I feel bad that I don't go every day," she says. "There's a 90-year-old who does it."

Walking past Murphy's ice-cream shop I figure if this is swimming weather in Ireland, then hell, it's also ice-cream weather. Besides, the sun has been out for a consistent 10 minutes now. I turn back and duck through Murphy's eye-catching royal blue facade. The guy who offers me a taste of everything is wearing a puffa jacket. Zipped up. And a tweed cap.

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There are about a dozen flavours; from chocolate whiskey to sea salt and Dingle gin. The milk comes from a local farm - from a rare breed of indigenous Kerry cow that produces milk with globules of butterfat smaller than those found in other cows, apparently making it easier to digest.

The cream is also local, the salt in the sea salt flavour from local seawater, filtered and boiled down. It is unexpected but perfect with Irish brown bread ice-cream, the bread caramelised with sugar and baked for eight hours before being incorporated.

At a price that would cause apoplexy in Italians, (7.50 euros for a medium!) it is the best ice-cream I've had - utterly worth it.

I just have time to finish my cone before the grey clouds scud back across the sun, and just like that, ice-cream weather's over. murphysicecream.ie