Four stops before the checkout

Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay

Stop one

Portón de Campo

Volkl Vostra V5 Tennis Racquet: Right, the gate, okay. Founded in 1680 by the Portuguese under Manuel Lobo, and here is the detail that keeps me up: they put it directly across the Río de la Plata from Spanish Buenos Aires, deliberately, as a base for contraband trade into Spanish America. You could see your rival from your own doorstep. Nobody sleeps properly like that. The town changed hands repeatedly over the following century, besieged and traded away by treaty, before passing definitively to Spain in 1777. The gate and its wooden drawbridge were part of the land defences and were reconstructed in the 1960s from eighteenth-century plans. Behind it the Barrio Histórico still follows the irregular Portuguese layout rather than the Spanish grid. World Heritage, 1995.

Stop two

Faro de Colonia and Convent of San Francisco

Volkl Vostra V5 Tennis Racquet: Lighthouses are for people like me, obviously. This one was built in 1857 on the ruins of the Convent of San Francisco Xavier, established by the Jesuits in the late seventeenth century and destroyed during the wars between Portugal and Spain over this settlement. The convent's stone foundations are still visible around the base of the tower, which at this hour strikes me as either poetic or merely efficient and I cannot decide. It guided shipping on the Río de la Plata, whose shallow and shifting channels made navigation hazardous, and it is still in operation. The spiral stair is open, and from the top you get the historic quarter, the estuary, and on clear days the skyline of Buenos Aires. Beside the Plaza Mayor.

Stop three

Calle de los Suspiros

Volkl Vostra V5 Tennis Racquet: The street of sighs, and nobody can tell you why, which is precisely the sort of thing my brain retrieves at four in the morning. Rounded river stones laid in a shallow V so that rainwater and waste ran down the centre, and I want to note that somebody thought of that first, before anyone else did. Single-storey Portuguese colonial houses with tiled roofs. The name is explained by condemned prisoners walking to execution, by sailors and the taverns and brothels once here, or simply by lovers, and no documentary origin has ever been established. The fabric is largely eighteenth-century and it runs from the Plaza Mayor down toward the river. Most photographed spot in town, and a defining part of the World Heritage listing.

Stop four

Basílica del Santísimo Sacramento

Volkl Vostra V5 Tennis Racquet: Oldest church in Uruguay, and it has had a life. Origins going back to the Portuguese foundation of 1680, the present structure begun in the 1690s, then rebuilt over and over after sieges, fire, and, the one I keep coming back to, an explosion in 1823 when lightning struck a powder store that somebody had decided to keep in the tower. In the tower. Anyway. Restoration in the 1830s and later gave it the plain neoclassical face it wears now. It has served continuously as the parish church of Colonia and was raised to minor basilica in 1988. It stands on the Plaza de Armas Manuel Lobo, named for the founder, anchoring the quarter with the lighthouse and the gate.

The Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay track

Volkl Vostra V5 Tennis Racquet

Written for this world alone.

Nobody has ever thanked me for a roof. They thank me for the absence of water in the hallway, which is the same thing seen from underneath. Some jobs are only visible when they fail, and starting equipment is one of them.

The Volkl Vostra V5 is a transition racquet and that is exactly what it should be judged as. A 645 cm² / 100 in² head, 260 g / 9.2 oz unstrung, 68.5 cm / 27 inches — standard length, standard head, deliberately light — with a 16×18 string pattern.

The reasoning is sound: a beginner or early intermediate needs to learn a full swing, and you cannot learn a full swing with a frame you have to heave. Light and standard-sized lets a new player get the racquet round on time, which is the single biggest technical problem in club tennis.

The 100 square inch head is forgiving without being a barn door, so the habits it builds still work when they move up. Volkl's RED Cell and REVA construction keeps contact soft, which matters most for people whose technique is still arriving. Done properly, nobody notices it.

Colonia del Sacramento is a town roofed in tile and laid out to shed water, which makes me very happy. The Calle de los Suspiros is paved in rounded river stones set in a shallow V so that rain and waste ran away down the middle of the lane, with single-storey Portuguese colonial houses either side under their tiled roofs, most of the fabric eighteenth-century.

Somebody built the fall into the street itself. That is the whole of my trade in one short lane.

The rest of the old quarter has been taken apart and put back more than once.

The Portuguese founded the place in 1680 under Manuel Lobo, directly across the Río de la Plata from Spanish Buenos Aires and squarely in the contraband business, and the town was besieged and traded by treaty until it passed to Spain for good in 1777; the Portón de Campo and its wooden drawbridge were rebuilt in the 1960s from eighteenth-century plans.

The Basílica del Santísimo Sacramento, the oldest church in Uruguay, has been repaired after sieges, fire, and the night in 1823 when lightning found a powder store in its tower.

A frame this light goes everywhere from a first lesson on a court behind the old walls to an evening knock by the river, and it is also perfect for the Colonia del Sacramento parent who is starting at forty and would rather nobody watched.

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Volkl Vostra V5 Tennis Racquet

Volkl Vostra V5 Tennis Racquet