Another early morning. Mary arrived at 6.15 and wonderful dearly beloved drove us to the tram stop for our journey to Wimbledon. I was optimistic and wore a short-sleeve cotton shirt with a cardigan (umbrella in bag) but she was wearing a fleece, padded jacket and woolly socks and boots! The tram service is excellent, much faster than buses and way smoother than trains.
At Wimbledon we joined the queue, where they gave us a booklet on queuing (only in England!) and a queue ticket. Security was very strict, just like catching a plane, with x-ray machines and security arches, and thorough bag search. After 4 hours in the queue, we finally got our tickets into the ground and almost wished we hadn't. We tried to get onto any of the outside courts but the crush of people stopped us. We're both reasonably tall, with sharp elbows but after 2 hours ended up on Henman Hill with a glass of pimms, watching the big screen, and thinking that we could have stayed at home to see it on TV. Feeling revived, we set off again and managed to get seats for 4 matches (Haase v Riba, Lu v Robredo, Tomic v Davydenko, Czink v Stosur). This was the reason we were there: to see LIVE tennis.
The only time I've been to Wimbledon before was during the 80s and there were definitely fewer people then, which made the outer courts more accessible. We ended up enjoying ourselves today but vowing to buy seats in the show courts next time.
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