24 June 2011

Wimbledon fever!

It's the last week in June so of course our annual Wimbledon fever has hit! Us Brits go mad for tennis for two weeks a year and put immense pressure on all of our home tennis players but mostly on Andy Murray!

Apart from the tennis, Wimbledon is famous for its queue so I decided to give it a go. My thinking was: it's day 2, only the first week so there will be plenty to see on the outside courts and it's a dry day so why not join the queue and hope for the best. Well, I was not alone, it felt like half of London had exactly the same idea. We joined the snaking line at 1.30 only to be told we wouldn't get into the grounds before 5.30! Rather bad news but being Brits we stuck it out and it wasn't that bad - we finally got in at 5.10! We passed the line of tents for the people already camping out for the next day to see Nadal on centre court! The queue is well behaved as you get a numbered ticket on arrival so any attempt to jump to the front by joining friends who were there earlier is stamped on - good news for proper queue-ers!

However, once inside all that waiting faded away and I roamed around the outside courts in the sunshine seeing loads of tennis action very close up. Many of the players were new to me but the better known included Bhagdatis, Nalbandian, Tsonga, Webley-Smith (Brit). It's amazing how close you get to them and 3 and half hours of great tennis and the wonderful Wimbledon atmosphere was a good reward for all that queueing. Yes, it would have been brilliant to have centre court tickets to see the Federer and Djovovic matches I could only hear the shouts for but I recommend taking all your good queueing skills and giving it a go next year.

Photos - where we started at 1.30 with a handy sign so you know you are in the right place!; the tent city; beautiful outside court; one to show just how close you can be; the backdrop of the wonderful centre court; and, an action shot of the brilliant Tsonga.
Exhausting work so that's all for this week!


Bye for now,

Sue


@itsyourlondon

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