Dancing at dawn: Harrogate’s 7am farm shop rave

Almost 200 people swapped their usual Friday morning routine for a coffee rave at Fodder – complete with a sunrise, rainbow and plenty of big tunes.

There can't be many places you would expect to find almost 200 ravers dancing at 7am on a Friday morning.

But inside Fodder Café at the Great Yorkshire Showground, the coffee was flowing, the music was pumping and a packed dancefloor was already in full swing.

Outside, the sun was coming up and a rainbow stretched across the sky as the early-morning revellers made their way around the showground before heading inside for Rant & Ramble's Coffee Rave.

By 7.30am, the café had been transformed.

A live DJ took to the decks, percussionist Romi Foxx added the drums and a crowd of people danced their way into Friday.

Among them was Harrogate's Mayor Viv Poskitt.

“I've decided to come on a coffee rave because I love coffee and I love raving and I love dancing with my friends,” she said.

For Sue Parkyn, from Lower Dunsforth, the event had been on her to-do list for months.

“I'm here to party,” she said. “I've heard so much about these events and it's been on my to-do list for months so me and my friends have decided to come and check it out and have some fun.”

It didn't take long for her to decide the early start had been worth it.

“It was amazing. I feel invigorated. We are absolutely going to do it again.”

Personal trainer Sue White, from Birstwith, had discovered the events on Instagram and was keen to see the crowd for herself.

“I just want to see women all out having fun and dancing, living their best life on a morning,” she said.

“What more could you want?”

And there was something distinctly different about this dancefloor.

There were no late-night clubbers nursing the effects of the night before – just people who had deliberately got out of bed early to dance, drink coffee and spend an hour forgetting about everything else.

For Sophie Hartley, it was a first.

“It was an amazing start to the day,” she said. “Who would have thought we can rave without a drop of alcohol in us?

“That's the first time I've ever danced at this time in the morning without any booze. What a buzz, I don't want to go back to real life now.”

Instead of cocktails, the crowd drank coffee before getting changed and heading off to work.

That sense of escape was exactly what Rant & Ramble co-founder Leesa Collinge hoped people would take from the event.

Leesa, from York, set up Rant & Ramble in 2023 as a way to “clear her head” after her mother was diagnosed with lung cancer. Her mother died from the disease nine months later.

As the final song ended, she stood in front of the cheering crowd, visibly emotional.

“To see this is just incredible,” she told them.

“It's all about joy and starting the morning on a high, because life is hard.

“Coming here for that hour, forgetting that to-do list, forgetting what you have got going on at home.

“What we've got to remember is, we are free to do what we want to do. We forget this.

“We are not here for long. We are here for such a short time, so let's enjoy it.”

Then, just like that, the rave was over.

It was only 8am.

For most people, the working day was just beginning.

For almost 200 people at Fodder, they'd already danced their way into Friday.