Four stops before the checkout

Cork, Ireland

Stop one

St Anne's Church, Shandon

Volkl Vostra V9 305g Tennis Racquet: Okay — first stop, and I have been looking forward to this one all week. St Anne's, Shandon. Two colours on the tower: red sandstone on two sides, pale limestone on the other two, because they used what the river and the ruins gave them. On the very top there is a gilded salmon spinning round. A salmon! And below it, four clock faces, and here is the bit — the four have never quite agreed with one another, so the whole of Cork calls her the Four-Faced Liar. My notes said liar and I assumed I had copied it down wrong and went and checked. It is not wrong. Two hundred years of telling a city the time and that is the thanks she gets. Also you can climb up and ring the bells yourself. Anyone. You, right now. Sorry, I am aware I am very excited.

Stop two

Blarney Castle

Volkl Vostra V9 305g Tennis Racquet: About eight kilometres northwest of the city — a ruined medieval tower house standing in wooded grounds, with the famous stone set below the battlements. Now the story, and I had to read this three times to be sure of it. Queen Elizabeth kept demanding that the lord of Blarney submit, and he kept writing back these beautiful letters, full of promises and agreeing to absolutely nothing, until she lost patience and declared it was all Blarney — and that is how the word entered English, meaning talk that charms you out of the point. A word. From one man being politely impossible by post. And people still lean backwards over a drop to kiss the stone in the hope of catching it. I asked whether that was genuinely true. It is genuinely true.

Stop three

English Market

Volkl Vostra V9 305g Tennis Racquet: In here, mind the step, entrance is off Princes Street. There has been a market on this exact ground since 1788, which I wrote down as 1888 in my first draft and had to correct out loud in front of my supervisor, so believe me, 1788, I will not be getting that one wrong again. Iron columns, the gallery running round above, the decorated fountain in the middle. And this covered Victorian market has survived a fire, a rebuilding, and the burning of the city — and it still opens every morning, and somebody's hands still pass somebody else food across a counter. Everyone tells me this is the standard first-day stop for a new guide. I do not understand how it is routine to anybody.

Stop four

Cobh (Queenstown) waterfront

Volkl Vostra V9 305g Tennis Racquet: This is Cobh, twenty-four kilometres from the city — the coloured houses tiered up the hill under the spire of St Colman's Cathedral, and that is the old White Star Line pier. I want to get this one right, so I am going to say it plainly and leave it alone. This was the Titanic's last port of call, in April 1912, and passengers were tendered out from here. Three years later the Lusitania was sunk off this coast and the dead were brought ashore to this town. And for generations, before and after, millions of people left Ireland from this quay. The graves here are still tended. That is not something I am going to add anything to. Take as long as you want.

The Cork, Ireland track

Volkl Vostra V9 305g Tennis Racquet

Written for this world alone.

Fat, lye, heat, time. That is the entire recipe and it has not changed in four thousand years. What changes is the cure — the weeks of doing nothing at all while the bar hardens — and everybody wants to skip it. You cannot skip it.

The Volkl Vostra V9 305g is the cured version of this family. Fifteen grams above the 290, at 305 grams unstrung, and that is the step where a club frame becomes a proper one: enough mass that a hard, flat ball does not push the head off line, enough that your volleys land with weight behind them rather than being punched at.

It keeps the modern club specification — a mid-plus head with a 16×19 pattern, forgiving on off-centre contact and open enough for real spin — and it keeps Volkl's arm-friendly construction, RED Cell material and REVA damping, which is what makes a heavier frame comfortable rather than punishing.

It suits a player with a full, honest swing who has decided they want stability more than easy power. Still building your technique, take the lighter one and come back to me.

Cork is a city that understands curing, which is to say waiting. St Anne's Church in Shandon carries a tower half red sandstone and half white limestone, because they built with whatever the river and the ruins gave them, and its four clock faces have never once agreed with each other, so the whole city calls her the Four-Faced Liar. A gilded salmon turns on the top.

Anyone at all may climb up and ring the bells. I always do.

And things here are given time to become themselves. There has been a market on the ground of the English Market since 1788, through a fire, a rebuilding and the burning of the city, and it is still every morning a place where somebody's hands pass somebody else food under iron columns and a decorated fountain.

Eight kilometres down the harbour, Cobh keeps the tiered coloured houses and the White Star pier where the Titanic called last in April 1912, where the Lusitania dead were brought ashore in 1915, and from which millions left Ireland for good.

A frame like this gets carried everywhere from a wet Tuesday under the Shandon bells to a bright Sunday on a court above the harbour at Cobh, and it is also perfect for the Cork player who has finally stopped rushing their swing.

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Volkl Vostra V9 305g Tennis Racquet

Volkl Vostra V9 305g Tennis Racquet