02
Stop two
Great Mosque of Chlef
Wilson Champion's Choice Hybrid 16g Tennis String Set: This city has rebuilt itself from rubble twice. It was called El-Asnam, The Idols, after the antique statues its Arab conquerors found among the Roman ruins. A devastating earthquake struck in September 1954, and another on 10 October 1980, one of the strongest recorded in Algeria, flattened much of the city, after which it was renamed for the Chelif River. The Great Mosque rose as the spiritual centrepiece of the reconstruction, its prayer hall and minaret built to modern anti-seismic standards yet composed in the Maghrebi tradition of horseshoe arches and a square minaret tower. Old manners, new engineering. One approves of both, sincerely.
03
Stop three
Ruins of Castellum Tingitanum
Wilson Champion's Choice Hybrid 16g Tennis String Set: Beneath the modern streets lies Castellum Tingitanum, a Roman town of Mauretania Caesariensis commanding the fertile middle valley of the Chelif, Algeria's greatest river. Founded as a fortified settlement on the road between Cartennae on the coast and the interior garrisons, it prospered on grain and olives and acquired baths, basilicas, and the statuary that centuries later so astonished the Arab newcomers that the place became The Idols. Columns, capitals, inscriptions and mosaic floors keep surfacing during rebuilding, with portions conserved near the basilica site. Roman, Vandal, Byzantine, Arab, Ottoman, French: six epochs. One does admire a family that keeps its papers in order.
Two ingredients that would each be wrong alone, combined in the right proportion, become the thing everybody wants. Nobody eats pure fat. Nobody eats pure lean. The craft is the ratio.
The set pairs Wilson Natural Gut 16 (1.30 mm) with Luxilon ALU Power Rough 16L (1.25 mm) — half a set of each, packaged to be strung together. Natural gut alone is sublime and moves around too much; a co-polyester alone gives you control and bite and can feel like a plank.
Champion's Choice is the most famous hybrid in tennis for exactly that reason.
Put gut in the mains and the textured ALU Power Rough in the crosses and you get the combination that has been on more Grand Slam trophies than any other setup: the gut supplies the deep pocket, the comfort and the tension maintenance, while the rough co-poly crosses grip the mains for spin and stop the bed from shifting.
It is expensive and it is worth understanding before you buy: gut hates moisture, so it is not a string for wet courts. String the gut mains first, and treat the whole job with more care than a synthetic.
Chlef is a city that has been remade from its own parts more than once. Beneath it lies Castellum Tingitanum, a Roman town of Mauretania Caesariensis commanding the fertile middle valley of the Chelif, Algeria's greatest river, on the road from Cartennae to the interior.
Its Basilica of Saint Reparatus, raised in AD 324, is among the oldest Christian monuments in North Africa, and the mosaic floor there is the same argument I am making about the string bed: small hard pieces set against soft ones, and the joint is where the whole thing lives.
The Great Mosque presides over a centre that has twice rebuilt itself from rubble after earthquakes — the city was called El-Asnam, the Idols, after the antique statues the Arab conquerors found among the Roman ruins. And Chlef railway station stands on the Algiers-Oran line, the steel backbone of northern Algeria.
A set of this is also perfect for a town that keeps two materials in the same wall and has never once apologised for the seam.
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