During the recent bought of warm weather I thought I would treat myself to a Walls Solero as I am a big fan of these.

What is a Solero, well it was first launched by Walls in 1994 and was the first ice cream lolly of its kind combining ice cream with a soft fruit puree - sound delicious then read on an I will tell you.

Lets get the price bit out of the way, you can buy a pack of 3 for around £1.99 in most supermarkets though do look out for the BOGOF offers that are sometimes around as this really does make them a bargin. Mine on this occasion was bought in my local shop for £1.00 which seems to be the individual sale price across most newsagents locally selling these though sometimes they can be more. Do watch out though if you are at the seaside and buy these from an ice cream vendor as the price shoots up to between £1.50 to £2.00 which I personally feel is outrageous.

Back to the actual ice cream now, the flavour I bought and what appears to be the most available from my experience is the exotic flavour, though you can also get Solero in Orange fresh, Red fruits and peach yoghurt flavour though these tend to be in multipacks only at least in my area.

So what is 'exotic' flavour well looking at the list of ingredients its is a combination of passion fruit, mango and peach with some pineapple juice added but most importantly there is not an E number in sight.

The wrapper is coloured to reflect the fruit flavours and depicts pictures of the fruits sliced in half to tempt you to buy and for those of you who count the calories - only 99 in this so can be a nice treat if you are watching your weight through a calorie controlled diet. Opening the wrapper is extremely easy and is no different than opening a magnum or feast wrapper as all of these appear to be made from the same material these days and on doing so I am greeted by a faint fruit aroma and a lovely orange coloured frozen puree coating of my ice cream, off with the rest of the wrapper without too much care whether it ends up in 6 or 7 pieces or not, let me at the Solero I say.

The taste test, as I lifted my solero up to my mouth I was eager to taste the fruit puree coating and see whether, in fact, it was a good as what the wrapper says and gently nibble a bit off. Wow my taste buds where alight with the flavours exploding in my mouth there is no particularly overbearing flavour of one particular fruit but a fine balance between all three and you most certainly able to identify each individual one quite easily was the puree melts in your mouth. Moving onto the middle after I have nibbled off most of the fruit puree on the outside my eyes are greeted by the promise of Walls ice cream centre but no this is not just plain vanilla Walls ice cream it has swirls of the fruit puree within it just to remind you that this is not just you ordinary ice cream with a fancy coating but the actual inside that been though about as well, and the creaminess of the Walls ice cream sits really well with the puree without either dominating and give a real nice finish to your ice cream treat.

Would I buy these again, oh yes without a doubt, not only do they have a fantastic flavour but there was never any anxious moments worrying about whether my ice cream was going to detach itself from the stick even though the stick itself is nothing unique and just your standard paddle shaped bit of wood with the word Solero on it as there is nothing worse than walking along the beach on your ice cream falling apart.