Wimbledon and #THEQUEUE experience.
Wimbledon! I had to write a blog post about this as it was insane.
I was very lucky to have the opportunity to experience both sides of Wimbledon! The plan being, to go and get in the queue with my 75 year old Nan at 6.45 in the morning last Wednesday to get ground passes. As a huge tennis fan my Nan was over the moon at the idea and was going to get up at 4am to get up to London. This all changed very rapidly and British Tennis kindly had me over for the day, I got to share the amazing experience of Centre Court, without the queue, the easy access tickets, the prime court and the hilight of course watching Serena Williams and Novak Jokavich play. It was an epic day out.
With my Nan on Centre court!
Working on my game with British Tennis, trust me I need a racquet this big, haha
I enjoyed the experience of Wimbledon so much we decided to get a crew together and give the famous queue a go!
Hearing all sorts of stories, people camping 2 days out to get the prestigious Centre Court tickets. My friends of course having work we couldn’t spend the whole day before camping, however we managed to get down to the site for 3.30pm on Friday and pitch up our £20 Argos tents. Armed with snacks, no blankets however due to the heatwave that week, we went light. Literally all the tents a foot away from each other, we were tickets 1451-57 and that meant we had guaranteed tickets for the next day for Court 2. A solid effort, but to be honest we weren't fussed about having those tickets, THE mission was on to see the main man ANDY MURRAY.
Camping overnight is serious banter, everyone is in it for the long haul, people arriving at 6am the day before us to get the prestigious Centre Court tickets (HARDCORE), fans arriving constantly throughout the night to join the queue. During the night, the weather Gods decided to open the damn and the camp site literally got hit by a monsoon, thunder and lightening. Let’s just say our £20 tents leaked just a little bit. We then woke up at 4.30 am after literally having not slept at all to something that looked like a War zone, people still arriving constantly! It sounds horrific, but the banter amongst everyone was unreal! By the morning there were 15,000+ people in the site. One of my friends arrived at 5.30am and entered as the last 15 to get ground passes alone.
We got woken by a Steward at 5.30am, by then we had actually already been up an hour and a half chatting with our fellow neighbours. By 9.30 am after a few more hours in THEQUEUE we had made it into the grounds, and heard rumours of “TICKET resales” so we sat at the front of the barriers to do the walk up to the Murray Mound, we ended up 4th in the queue with a bit of a hustle and then sat at the side of the mound from 10.30 am till 3pm waiting for resales to open! This meant as soon as someone left centre court we could buy the unused tickets for only £10 and it went to Charity, such a good idea,which meant the stadium stayed full and ourselves plus the other 1000 odd people wanting Centre Court stood a chance . At 3.09pm one of the Stewards came over and told us, this had not happened in 45 years, we had 4 seats together on Centre Court, after 24 hours in THEQUEUE this was the best news ever and our patience had paid off! We had expected to be dotted all over the court, rather than sitting next to each other. So, £35 later, sun burnt, exhausted but so excited we had our tickets to watch Andy Murray win his game, we even caught a glimpse of Federer in action too, it couldn't have been a better weekend mission! I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to get a good crew together and have an unforgettable weekend watching Tennis!
At 3.09 we got handed out £10 tickets to Centre court! Slightly chuffed.
The BBC also spotted us in the crowd, must have been the Wimbledon headbands ;) haha
After an epic weekend, I am back home and in the training mode, my flights are booked to the Southern Hemisphere! Summer has been great, but I can't wait to get back on snow now. I have some some great news, I can now run again, which is fantastic, I headed down to the Foot Clinic locally in Bangor and they sorted me out with some custom Pegasus insoles. Serious game changer and I am hoping this is going to help my plantar fascia I have been suffering with over the last few years when snowboarding :) Stay tuned.
Aimz
x