Tips from the Queue for a Day at Wimbledon

Thinking of queuing at Wimbledon? Here’s what I learned from our experience last year…

We left the house at 3.45 am to reach Wimbledon by 4.30, traveling through an Uber. What’s your view of Uber? That was only the second time I’ve used it, and our driver was safe and courteous. All very easy.

When we arrived, we were numbers 2073 and 2074, which are too far back for show court tickets (tickets for centre court, court 1 and court 2 go to the first 500 or so). That means we’d be buying grounds passes for £25 each, and court 3, which has mainly unreserved seating, would be our first choice chance for seeing good matches live, especially as an American was playing there third.

When to get to the queue

Do you need to arrive so early as we did? I don’t think so. You can check @ViewfromtheQ and see what sort of numbers people are posting at which time. As we didn’t score show court tickets, and as there were still plenty of seats on court 3 later, we could have arrived at 6am, when someone got number 3263. Of course all of this depends on who is playing and what day it is. We were there for Manic Monday – the magical time when every remaining player plays, so I think traffic was pretty high. But a Saturday would be crazy busy too. Today, when it’s the women’s quarter finals, I see that someone got number 921 at 5.45am! Not as much demand for women’s tennis in this country, I’m afraid.

I talked with some women on the Tube coming home who had camped. They arrived Sunday morning and were something like 1800 I think. They did actually get onto court 1. They said ear plugs were a must as the tents are right next to each other and you can hear everything, and that sleep is hard to find as the hours of daylight are many at this time of year, and the queue officials start to wake people up around 5am to clear the tents away.

What’s the queue like?

It’s a convivial place, with people to chat with either side. We talked a bit with the Aussies in front of us, but mainly talked with two friends who met while doing their physics PhDs in Switzerland, one Swiss and one from Argentina! My son and I had loads of fun in the queue and even sat with the guys behind us for a while.

I don’t know that we’ll be able to queue this year, but next year when my son has finished his GCSEs, we’ll be there!