A day out at Wimbledon

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Had an excellent day out at Wimbledon today. Wimbledon is both a pleasant village/suburb in outer London, but also the site of a tennis grand slam tournament held for 2 weeks every year at the end of June/start of July. It is possible to get tickets for the tennis through a public ballot held every year, but if you miss out on this you can also queue for tickets on the day. Wimbledon is one of the few British sporting events where you can still get tickets on the day, even if you are not affiliated to a particular club. However, to get these tickets you have to be willing to get up extremely early in the morning (or even camp out the night before). We opted for the former, and so at 4:15 on a saturday morning my alarm went (on a saturday - argh!!) and after a quick shower Barry (boyfriend) and I headed out on our bikes to cycle from the East End to Waterloo station. London at 5am on a saturday is an incredible sight. It's so quiet and peaceful. It almost makes me want to get up at that time every day (note, "almost"...!).

So we reached Waterloo and caught a train which arrived in Wimbledon 15 minutes later. After walking through Wimbledon towards the tennis site, we joined the hundreds of people in the queue for tickets (at 5:50am). We were given a voucher to give our place in the queue (number 1171) and a "Guide to Queueing for the Championships". For the next few hours, the queue moved slowly along the pavement (Americans, read 'sidewalk'), during which time we enjoyed reading our books, reading the paper and buying tea/coffee and bacon butties. yummy.

Finally, we reached the security checks and soon afterwards we were buying our ground passes (£17 each). And we finally made it in to the grounds at 10:05am. Yep, that's right, we queued for 4 and a quarter hours... how very British! The rest of our day was spent wandering the grounds, buying me a giant tennis ball, watching players warm up and watching some great matches. We were able to watch both Nadal and Roddick practising in the morning. It was great being so close to them and watching their amazing shots in action. We also saw 2 excellent matches out on Court 13. We saw a ladies match - Ivanovic vs Safina, which went to 3 sets, and a mens single match of Gonzalez (from Chile) vs Ferrer (from Spain) which went to 5 sets. Watching tennis live is so much fun as you are really close to the action and can encourage your favourite players. Whilst watching the matches we also munched on the picnic we had taken with us, making sure we drank plenty of water. Temperatures exceeded 30 degrees celsius, and sitting in the sun all afternoon certainly makes you hot! (although I guess it was worse for the players... yikes...).

By about 5:30pm we had watched loads of tennis and felt that we were happy to spend the rest of the evening relaxing on "Henman Hill". This is a big slope of grass rising behind Court No.1 where you can watch the match being played on Centre Court on a massive screen. We watched Andy Murray (British) vs Andy Roddick (American). Murray was getting loads of support. I decided to be on Roddick's side just because no one else was! However, in the end Murray won - and to be honest he was the better player so it was a fair enough outcome. It was still very enjoyable though, particularly with the beers we drank and pringles and biscuits we ate.

Finally, after all of the excitement, we left the tournament grounds at 8:40pm. We walked into Wimbledon Village and enjoyed a nice meal at Pizza Express, before getting the train back to Waterloo. From there we cycled along the South Bank and back to the flat. We eventually arrived home at 11:30pm. It was an absolutely exhausting day, but well worth doing. Going to Wimbledon is a great day out, and I would recommend it to anyone.

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Photos

Wimbledon
Me enjoying the sunshine and tennis

Sunrise over St Pauls
On our cycle to Waterloo

The queue
Ah, 4 and a quarter hours of fun!

Me in the queue
With my "how to queue at Wimbledon" guide!

Order of play
Where you can decide what you want to see that day!

Nadal
An excellent player, warming up on the outside courts

End of the match
Gonzalez had just lost to Ferrer (boo hoo!)

Barry at Wimbledon
That's Navratilova in the white cap on court!

'Henman Hill'
Watching Murray vs Roddick

The big screen
At the end of Murray's match

Comments

[tom]

:)
thanks for posting this review it was great! i have been a few times myself but its always nice to read about how others spent thier day. And i have to agree that wimbledon is a great day out for anyone. Oh and thanks for including the queuing cause its something i would love to do and now i have an insight on the experience. thanks very much tomx