A day out at Wimbledon « Mim & Ian’s travel blog

To get tickets to watch the Championships at Wimbledon, one typically has 2 options: enter the public ballot or queue at the gates on the day (early in the morning – they even allowed those camping out the night before to pitch tents). It’s a little known fact that you can also buy tickets online from Tickemaster the night before. The only issue with the tickets you get this way is that there are VERY few made available and they are waaaaaaaaaaaaaay up the back. We didn’t mind of course as we’d never been to Wimbledon and have always wanted to go.

So each night during the Championships, we would both log into Ticketmaster and sit there hitting the refresh button in our Web Browsers. The reason for this was because the tickets became available at 8:30pm. If you attempt to buy tickets before, you’re met with the “tickets aren’t available yet” message. Once it opens however, you need to be VERY quick and VERY lucky. They’re pretty much gone within a minute and if you don’t get it on the first attempt, you should just give up.

We were lucky enough to score ourselves Centre Court tickets for the middle Saturday (28th June) to watch the following 3rd round matches:

Caroline Wozniacki vs. Jelena Jankovic
Tommy Haas vs. Andy Murray
Nicolas Kiefer vs. Rafael Nadal

That’s right, we got to watch the eventual champion, Rafa Nadal! Needless to say, we were excited.

We took the train there and walked from Wimbledon station, which was full of people heading to the tennis. We could have hopped onto a bus to get to the courts, but decided to take a walk due to the queues. It wasn’t too bad actually and took around 20 minutes. Perhaps it was closer to 30 minutes, but Wimbledon is a really nice area so we didn’t notice (even though most of the walk was uphill). Our excitement probably made the walk much more pleasant as well.

The place was buzzing with activity and we took our time walking around the various outside courts to catch some of the action (including some of the junior matches). After all, we had about 45 minutes before the matches were due to start on Centre Court.

We definitely got our money’s worth, with Nadal’s match finishing around 9pm. It was a fun day, the weather was great (and warm) and we got to experience an iconic, historical event that is on the “to-do” list of many people. Here’s a few pictures from the day (click on each for a larger version).

At the top of the hill where people sit to watch the big screen (affectionately known as “Henman Hill”).

They Royal Box, which on the day included luminaries such as Martina Navratilova, Billie Jean King, Tim Henman, Todd Woodbridge, Sachin Tendulkar, a bunch of politicians, actors, and a few British Olympians.