Popular St Andrews ice cream shop's mobile cart beautifully restored by BBC's The Repair Shop

A mobile ice cream trailer, owned by Jannettas Gelateria, has been transformed and given a whole new lease of life thanks to BBC’s The Repair Shop.

Brothers Lewis and Ross Hazel took their family’s trailer, which had seen better days, to the experts at the BBC television series’ workshop.

And on Wednesday night, in the first episode of the new series, viewers were able to see the incredible transformation on the cart.

The ice cream cart was bought by the pair’s dad, Owen, and their grandad at auction in the 1990s and was used for selling ice cream at events.

When they took it to the Repair Shop it was in a state of disrepair, having been stored outdoors with rotten wood and rusty metal.

However, craftsman and expert Dom Chinea took on the task of restoring it to its former glory.

He said: “Seeing an ice cream trailer like this takes me straight back to being a kid, straight back to being at the seaside and wanting an ice cream.

“I am having to try and look past the condition this poor trailer is in because this whole situation is quite overwhelming.

“The top display area is a big concern, I feel like I am going to have to remake a lot of this wooden frame as it is just rotten.

“I can already see the chassis underneath, the steel part is rotten – I will probably have that blasted and stripped to see how bad the rust actually is and then I can start welding in new pieces where necessary and build up from there.

“There will be a new wooden frame, build up what we can, then I can deal with the paintwork at the top and get it looking its best.”

The family have been serving up gelato in St Andrews since 1908 with Lewis and Ross’ great great grandfather starting the business when he came over from Italy.

Since then the business has been passed down the generations with their parents currently running the South Street business and the brothers having recently joined to carry it on in future.

The brothers revealed that they intend to site the trailer outside the famous ice cream shop in the town.

While carrying out the work, Dom tried his best to maintain as much of the original trailer as possible, with some success, however some elements required to be replaced due to the damage they had suffered.

On seeing the finished cart, Lewis said it was “absolutely incredible” and “fantastic”, adding: “Our parents and our grandad, who is still with us, are going to be ecstatic to see this. They are going to be over the moon.”

The pair served others in the barn some ice cream treats from the newly restored trailer.

Lewis said: “It felt surreal to be serving from the family trailer because when we handed it over it was in such bad condition.

"It is fantastic what Dom has done and we are so proud to bring it home and show our parents and grandparents.”

Ross added: “I think it will be very sentimental to our mum, she would have grown up serving gelato since she was a wee kid probably from that trailer so I think she will be emotional.”

The episode is currently available to watch on BBC iPlayer.