The foxes are making coffee

Looking back as I topped Cliff Rigg this morning, I was reminded of my first crossing of the Lyke Wake Walk on 14 June 1969.

We had left the trig. point on Scarth Wood Moor at 12:30 a.m., so was crossing the ‘four sisters’ of the Cleveland Hills in time for a 4 a.m. breakfast stop at Clay Bank — that first crossing was very leisurely.

So dawn must have broken sometime when I was on Carlton, Cringle or Cold Moors, or Hasty Bank, and my first ever view of the Vale of Cleveland was hidden below a sea of cloud. I was walking along an island in a sea.

When I returned to Cliff Rigg 70 minutes later, the fields were completely smothered and the first drops of rain were falling.

There is a German phrase for a morning mist such as this which seems to permeate out of the ground: ‘die Füchse kochen Kaffee’, which translates literally ‘the foxes are making coffee‘¹Twitter @robgmacfarlane. [online] Available at: https://twitter.com/robgmacfarlane/status/1054251088319262721?lang=en [Accessed 28 Mar. 2022]..

And a mocha coffee awaited me a few minutes later.

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  Twitter @robgmacfarlane. [online] Available at: https://twitter.com/robgmacfarlane/status/1054251088319262721?lang=en [Accessed 28 Mar. 2022].