01
Stop one
Fujairah Fort
Yonex Grip Poweder: Push on through the date gardens — mind the dust, I am the cure for dust — and there, on a rocky knoll, quite unknown to me until this morning: Fujairah Fort. Seventeenth century, and among the oldest and most important forts in the United Arab Emirates. Local stone, mudbrick and plaster, a cluster of towers roped together by high walls. Residence of the ruling family, redoubt of the only emirate lying wholly east of the Hajar mountains. British naval forces shelled it in the early twentieth century during disputes with the sheikhdom, and the scars entered local lore. Restored around the millennium. I claim nothing. But I found it.
02
Stop two
Al Bidya Mosque
Yonex Grip Poweder: North of the city, beyond the watchtowers, I stumbled upon — and I use the word advisedly, there is a car park — the oldest known mosque in the United Arab Emirates. Archaeologists date Al Bidya to around the mid-fifteenth century. Stone and mud plaster, four low pointed domes carried on a single central pillar, a structure unique in the region, and no minaret whatsoever; the call to prayer went up from the rise behind, where the old watchtowers still stand. Digging around it turned up settlement traces reaching far further back, this small bay having long worked the Indian Ocean trade coast. Conserved, and still in use for prayer.
03
Stop three
Fujairah Museum
Yonex Grip Poweder: Expedition rule — when the terrain defeats you, go where somebody has already dug. The Fujairah Museum, beside the old fort, holds the emirate's archaeological and ethnographic memory: finds from Qidfa, Bithnah and other sites of these mountains and this coast. Bronze-age and iron-age pottery, metalwork and grave goods, thousands of years of settlement on a shore where the monsoon trade tied Arabia to India and East Africa. There is a bowl carved from an ostrich egg. An ostrich egg! Then the recent past — pearling and fishing gear, weaponry, silver jewellery, household life before oil. I have discovered a display case and I regret nothing.
04
Stop four
Al Hayl Castle
Yonex Grip Poweder: Into the Wadi Hayl now, southwest of the city, deep among the bare slopes of the Hajar — a short drive, but let us not dwell on that. Al Hayl Castle is a fortified residence built around the early twentieth century for the ruling Al Sharqi family: tower, majlis and dwelling quarters, a mountain seat and lookout controlling the wadi routes through the range, counted among the best-preserved traditional fortified architecture in the emirate. Around it lie the old Hayl village, its falaj channels and terraced gardens, and petroglyphs pecked into the boulders by people who came through here long before either of us.
I go up thirty feet of trunk with a rope and my hands, so believe me: grip is not a preference, it is the whole conversation. Yonex Grip Powder — the AC470 — is a 20 g tub made in Japan, formulated for water resistance so the grip does not slip when your hands sweat.
The blend is magnesium carbonate and calcium carbonate with pine resin, eggshell and zeolite, and it is designed specifically for use with a towelling grip, which is exactly where a slick handle causes the most trouble. A dab before you go out, a dab at the changeover, and the racquet stops trying to leave.
You will use it everywhere from a humid morning down on the coast to a dry afternoon up in the wadi, and it is also perfect for the date harvest, when everything you touch for a fortnight is sticky and a slipping handle is the least of anybody's problems.
Fujairah is date country and mountain country at once. Fujairah Fort stands on a rocky knoll above the date gardens of the old town, generally dated to the seventeenth century and among the oldest and most important forts in the Emirates — local stone, mudbrick and plaster, with a cluster of towers.
North along the coast is Al Bidya Mosque, the oldest known mosque in the UAE, dated by archaeologists to around the mid-fifteenth century: a small stone and mud-plaster prayer hall carrying four low pointed domes on a single central pillar.
The Fujairah Museum, near the old fort, holds finds from Qidfa, Bithnah and other sites of the mountains and coast — bronze age and iron age pottery and metalwork. And in Wadi Hayl, in the Hajar mountains southwest of the city, Al Hayl Castle was built around the early twentieth century as a mountain seat for the ruling Al Sharqi family.
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