TRAVEL TALES of ranaruby

Bob & William October and November 2025 brought some memorable moments in my life. Post Durga Puja, we were at our son’s place in Nottingham. There we experienced two lifetime journeys, both fortunately and coincidentally connected with famous litterateurs spaced vastly apart over five centuries in time. Visit one of the greatest English playwrights’ birthplaces, and be amidst the spectators in a live concert by a Nobel laureate in literature at Coventry. AT COVENTRY Bob Dylan The Bob Dylan Show was a surprise birthday gift from my son Arjun. For me, it was a first-time mega show in an indoor concert hall (Coventry Building Society Arena, November 13 2025), packed with over a thousand spectators. The ‘Minstrel Boy’ performed for two hours at a stretch without any break. He began with ‘I’ll be your baby tonight’ and finished with ‘Every grain of sand’. Both are highly contrasting in nature. Dylan's poetry transitioned from a direct and transparent intention of comfo...

Bakewell - old charm and pudding BAKEWELL Moorlands in the English countryside always bring back to my memory Emily Brontë’s ‘Wuthering Heights’. There, she vividly described the nineteenth-century Yorkshire moorland as open, wild, exposed, with untamed wind force and brooding character. The neighbouring Derbyshire moor, which we saw from Monsal Head, a Peak District viewpoint, was in contrast somewhat softer and picturesque. Maybe because we saw it as tourists in the twenty-first century. On our way back, we took a brief halt at a small, charming town. It was a pleasant surprise, as I had no previous knowledge about the town and its breathtaking beauty. Nor had I come across the name of this town, which is so heavily wrapped with history right from the Anglo-Saxon era. Early settlement around the 9th – 10th centuries is associated with a cluster of warm springs by the River Wye. Archaeologists have even discovered tra...