Four stops before the checkout

Bath, United Kingdom

Stop one

Roman Baths

Head Hawk Touch 16g Tennis String Reel: Provenance first. Built from around AD 70 at the springs the Romans called Aquae Sulis, where the water surfaces at 46 degrees Celsius after thousands of years travelling through the limestone, with bathing halls attached to a temple of Sulis Minerva — a local British goddess filed jointly with a Roman one, a cataloguing decision I rather admire. And then the documents: over a hundred curse tablets, thin lead sheets inscribed with appeals for divine retribution against thieves, recovered from the spring and now on the UNESCO Memory of the World register. Complaints, in writing, retained. The site was lost after the Roman withdrawal and rediscovered in stages from 1727; terrace and statues are Victorian, of the 1890s.

Stop two

Royal Crescent

Head Hawk Touch 16g Tennis String Reel: Built between 1767 and 1774 to designs by John Wood the Younger, and here is the filing anomaly: Wood designed only the facade. Purchasers bought a length of frontage and employed their own architects to build whatever they pleased behind it, which is why the rear elevations do not match — Queen Anne front and Mary-Anne back, as the phrase goes. The ha-ha in front keeps grazing animals off the lawn without interrupting the view, and Number 1 is restored as a Georgian house museum. But the file I return to is 1972, when the owner of number 22 painted her door primrose yellow instead of white and won the two-year legal battle that followed. Two years. Documented throughout.

cardio tennis for anxiety — Pulteney Bridge in Bath, Stone bridge over the River Avon in Bath lined with small shops along both sides, above a curved stepped weir

Stop three

Bath Abbey

Head Hawk Touch 16g Tennis String Reel: A site of Christian worship since the seventh century, and the entry that matters is 973, when Edgar was crowned first king of all England in an earlier church here — a ceremony that formed the basis for subsequent English coronations, which makes this the master copy and every coronation since a transcription. The present building was begun in 1499 by Bishop Oliver King, said to have dreamed of angels ascending and descending ladders, an image carved on the west front. Left roofless after the dissolution, restored from the 1570s and again by George Gilbert Scott in the 1860s, who added the nave's fan vaulting. Around fifteen hundred wall memorials. I have not counted them. I intend to.

Stop four

Pulteney Bridge

Head Hawk Touch 16g Tennis String Reel: Completed in 1774 to designs by Robert Adam for William Pulteney, who wanted to develop his land at Bathwick on the far bank and needed a crossing worthy of the approach. Adam based it loosely on Palladio's rejected design for the Rialto — a rejected drawing, retrieved and built, which is an archivist's idea of a happy ending. It is one of only a handful of bridges anywhere with shops across the full span on both sides, with the Ponte Vecchio in Florence and the Krämerbrücke in Erfurt. Alterations and flood damage repeatedly changed its appearance, so much of what you see comes from twentieth-century restorations working back toward Adam. The horseshoe weir below was rebuilt in the 1970s.

The Bath, United Kingdom track

Head Hawk Touch 16g Tennis String Reel

Written for this world alone.

A palm takes years to give you anything, then gives for a lifetime. Head Hawk Touch 16g comes on a 200-metre reel — 660 feet, roughly sixteen racquets — a monofilament at 1.30 mm built around Head's Crystal Core Technology, which is what gives this one its softer, more controlled character.

Sixteen gauge is the durable end of the range, and Touch is the comfortable end of the Hawk family, so the combination is the long-lasting, arm-friendly option.

Bath is the correct city for a conversation about waiting. The Roman Baths were built from around AD 70 at the springs the Romans called Aquae Sulis, where the water comes up at 46 degrees after a journey of thousands of years down through the limestone and back.

The complex put bathing halls beside a temple to Sulis Minerva, the local British goddess fused with the Roman one, and over a hundred curse tablets — thin lead sheets asking for divine retribution against thieves — came out of the spring and are now on the UNESCO Memory of the World register.

The whole thing was buried and forgotten after the Romans left and dug out again in stages from 1727; the terrace and the statues around the green pool are Victorian, added in the 1890s.

Up the hill, the Royal Crescent is thirty Georgian houses in one enormous curve behind a giant Ionic colonnade, finished in the 1770s by John Wood the Younger — and the fronts are uniform while the backs are not remotely, because buyers bought the facade and then built whatever they liked behind it.

Bath Abbey carries angels climbing stone ladders up its west front, some of them head first, after Bishop Oliver King dreamt them around 1499 and put his dream on the outside of the building for everybody to look at forever.

And Pulteney Bridge crosses the Avon with shops along the whole span on both sides, so from the middle you cannot tell you are on a bridge at all; Robert Adam designed it in the 1770s on Italian ideas, and there are only a handful like it left anywhere.

You will string from this reel everywhere from a club court in Bath to an indoor hall in Bristol, twenty minutes west, and by the way, it is also perfect for a long slow afternoon on the weir below Pulteney Bridge, which has been doing the same thing at the same speed for a very long time and intends to continue.

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Head Hawk Touch 16g Tennis String Reel

Head Hawk Touch 16g Tennis String Reel