Four stops before the checkout

Valdivia, Chile

cardio tennis for emotional wellness — Feria Fluvial in Valdivia, An open riverside market of steel-roofed stalls piled with silver fish, shellfish and seaweed, with sea lions hauled out on the concrete edge below waiting for scraps beside moored fishing boats

Stop one

Torreón Los Canelos

Head Reflex MLT 17g Tennis String Set: How much of a city is the part that simply refuses to fall down? This is one of two surviving defensive towers built in 1774 as part of the fortification of Valdivia — a city founded in 1552, destroyed by the Mapuche uprising of 1599, and refounded by the Spanish in 1645 as the most heavily fortified position on the Pacific coast of South America. The towers anchored a wall meant to stop attack by land. Stone, slit windows, a conical roof. And it stood through the enormous earthquake of May 1960, magnitude nine point five, the most powerful ever recorded, with its epicentre nearby, which sank parts of the surrounding land by two metres. Founded, destroyed, refounded. 1552. I did get there.

cardio tennis for emotional wellness — Fort of Niebla in Valdivia, A low fortification of dark volcanic stone cut into a bluff above a river mouth, with cannon in open embrasures facing the water, a whitewashed commandant's house and grass-covered earthworks

Stop two

Mercado Fluvial

Head Reflex MLT 17g Tennis String Set: Consider the sea lion, which has arranged, without argument or paperwork, to be fed for life. The Mercado Fluvial runs along the riverfront selling the catch of the Pacific and the estuary — hake, conger, salmon, machas, and picorocos, the giant barnacles eaten in southern Chile — with vegetables and seaweed besides, and a colony of South American sea lions hauls out on the quay beside the stalls, tolerated and fed with offcuts, pelicans and cormorants working the same angle. There has been a landing here since the colonial period, when the river joined Valdivia to the interior and the sea. The 1960 earthquake and the subsidence after it altered the river system substantially, drowning farmland and creating the wetlands upstream that now hold black-necked swans.

cardio tennis for emotional wellness — Torreón Los Canelos in Valdivia, A squat round stone tower of dark rough masonry with a conical tiled roof and narrow slit openings, standing alone on a grassy corner surrounded by modern streets and traffic

Stop three

Museo Histórico y Antropológico Maurice van de Maele

Head Reflex MLT 17g Tennis String Set: What does a house become when everyone who chose its furniture has gone? This one is the Casa Anwandter on Isla Teja, built in the 1860s for Karl Anwandter, a German pharmacist and political exile, among the leaders of the immigration that transformed southern Chile after 1850, when the government recruited German settlers to occupy the region. The collections cover Mapuche culture, silverwork and textiles among it, the Spanish colonial period and the fortifications, and the German settlement with the breweries, tanneries and shipyards that made Valdivia an industrial city. The house was damaged in the 1960 earthquake and restored. Founded in 1958 by the Belgian historian Maurice van de Maele, whose name it carries. Universidad Austral de Chile. The year, yes: 1958.

Stop four

Fuerte de Niebla

Head Reflex MLT 17g Tennis String Set: Is a defence ever finished, or only untested? This one — properly the Castillo de la Pura y Limpia Concepcion de Monfort de Lemus — was begun in 1671 at the mouth of the Valdivia river, part of a system guarding the only sheltered anchorage on this coast, its batteries cut into the cliff itself. And then, in February 1820, Lord Cochrane, the Scottish admiral commanding the Chilean navy, took the entire system in a night assault with a few hundred men, attacking from the landward side where the forts were weakest. It is regarded as one of the boldest actions of the wars of independence. Every fortification has a back. The fort is a museum now, with Corral and Mancera across the water.

The Valdivia, Chile track

Head Reflex MLT 17g Tennis String Set

Written for this world alone.

You are not holding the kite, you are holding a line, and how that line behaves is the whole ride. Head Reflex MLT is a line I would trust: a 100% nylon multifilament of over 1,300 filaments in a PU resin, which is what gives it extra control on top of a genuinely soft, arm-friendly feel. This is the 17 gauge, 1.25 mm, in a 12-metre set for one racquet.

Comfortable, balanced, never mushy, and nothing left over on a spool.

Valdivia. Check the water first. It has moved before.

We begin at the Torreón Los Canelos, a squat circular stone tower with a conical tiled roof and narrow slit windows standing on a street corner among modern buildings, looking entirely out of place. It is one of two survivors of the fortification of 1774.

Valdivia was founded in 1552, destroyed in the Mapuche uprising of 1599, and refounded by the Spanish in 1645 as the most heavily fortified position on the Pacific coast of South America. The tower rode out the earthquake of May 1960 — magnitude nine point five, the most powerful ever recorded, epicentre close by — which sank parts of the surrounding land by two metres.

Then the Mercado Fluvial along the riverfront: hake, conger, salmon, machas and picorocos, the giant barnacles they eat down here, sold under awnings with vegetables and seaweed. Below the stalls, on the concrete quay, a colony of South American sea lions hauls out and waits for offcuts among the pelicans and cormorants.

That 1960 subsidence rearranged the whole river system, drowning farmland and creating the wetlands upstream where the black-necked swans are now.

Then across to Isla Teja and the Museo Histórico y Antropológico Maurice van de Maele, in the Casa Anwandter, built in the 1860s for Karl Anwandter, a German pharmacist and political exile who was among the leaders of the immigration that remade southern Chile after 1850.

Mapuche silverwork and textiles, the Spanish colonial period and the fortifications, and the German settlement with its breweries, tanneries and shipyards. The house was damaged in 1960 and restored.

And we finish at the Fuerte de Niebla at the river mouth — properly the Castillo de la Pura y Limpia Concepción de Monfort de Lemus — begun in 1671, its gun emplacements cut straight into the cliff facing the open sea.

In February 1820 Lord Cochrane, the Scottish admiral commanding the Chilean navy, took the entire system in a night assault with a few hundred men by coming at it from the landward side, where the forts were weakest. Read the wind, take the side nobody is watching.

You will use this set everywhere from a court by the river in Valdivia to an indoor hall up in Temuco, and by the way, it is also perfect for an afternoon out at Niebla with the swell coming in, which is the only forecast around here I actually trust.

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Head Reflex MLT 17g Tennis String Set

Head Reflex MLT 17g Tennis String Set