So I’ve done the half day queuing for tickets at Wimbledon and I’ve done the entry via ballot tickets thanks to Akhlaq, twice, and now I can say that I’ve done the overnight thing for tickets.

Jules floated the idea of the doing the overnight thing not too long ago and I thought finally someone who is willing to go! Sandra was up for it too though I don’t think she actually knew very much about tennis at all.

I wasn’t sure what to expect at all from the experience. I just knew that I was in for a night of sleeplessness!

Due to our schedules we decided early on to go for a Friday, Day 5 of the Championship. This also allowed us to then have the weekend to recover from the experience. Day 5 was the 3rd round matches so this meant the possibility of higher quality matches … but with the higher quality matches came higher ticket prices! (I think this actually had some impact on the number of people in the queue too.)

Preparing to overnight it at Wimbledon was almost a military operation ensuring we had sufficient supplies of food and drink, a tent to sleep in (thanks Sandra), sleeping bags etc. We even went so far as to bring a disposable barbecue though it later turned out, despite what it said on the website, that we weren’t allowed to use it. So we left work to meet at Southfields for about 3.30pm. Walking down to the Common, where apparently the queue was being hosted for the first time, we were surprised to see a long long queue but only small number of tents. Turns out the long long queue was for entry into Wimbledon that day! A man directed us to a corner of the Common where we very quickly, when I say we I mean Sandra – heh heh, put up the tent. It was a bit strange however with all these people from the queue watching us. By 4.30 we were done. And then the waiting began.

Once the tents were up I was very amused to see that we still got junk mail! People came around with leaflets for Pizza, Chinese etc. This came in handy for later on.

To ensure that people queued in an orderly fashion queue cards were given out early (starting at about 5pm.) These queue cards needed to be handed in the following morning in exchange for wrist-bands which in turn needed to be handed in for an actual ticket but more on that later. This procedure stopped queue jumpers but also gave us the freedom to move about … most importantly to pick up our Chinese delivery and go to the toilet! We ended up being numbers 79, 80 and 81 in the queue which to me was very impressive. I later realised that every day they give out 500 Centre Court, 500 Court 1 and 500 court 2 tickets so I think its fair to say we were safely in.

By about 6pm we started to get a little peckish. Unfortunately, as I’ve already mentioned, fires of any sort were not allowed including our disposable barbecue but fortunately, as I’ve also already mentioned, we had junk mail so we had our pick of delivery options. Of course we went for Chinese and boy did it go down quickly once it was delivered! Did I mention it was also Sandra’s birthday today? As a treat we had a beautiful Thornton’s chocolate cake for dessert. It was delish … even for someone like me who’s not a fan of chocolate cake! It was very rich and very filling however and for about 4 hours after that I was definitely feeling it.

At about 8pm we had retired to inside the tent. It was a lot more comfortable to lie in there with our super full stomachs than sit outside on the grass (next time I’ll be sure to bring some porta-chairs.) We also had a surprise visitor. Not sure how the cat found us but he was well cute. Strangely, overnight, inside the tent it never really got dark so as a result of this, and as a result of our neighbours talking (very loudly) until very early the next morning, I barely got any sleep. So, by about 4am I think I was awake and ready to tackle the day at Wimbledon.

Before we’d retired for the night there weren’t very many tents up – I’d say about 100 at a maximum but by the time we got up to get ready for the day it had doubled overnight (including some people just in sleeping bags braving the rain without cover – crazy people!) plus more people had joined the queue as walk-ins. They must have started arriving around the time I awoke – as there was quite a buzz by that time. We were very lucky with the rain actually – it held off until we were in the tent and stopped by the time we stepped out in the morning.

By about 6.00am we had to pack up our tents and leave items in left luggage to join the queue proper. After this it was pretty much another few hours of queuing, broken up by HSBC offering us free strawberries (yummy), Evian free water bottles and also getting faces/arms painted with country flags. The queuing wasn’t so from the fact that there were people in front of us (we were pretty much at the front of the queue after all) but more the fact that we were waiting for Wimbledon to open for the day.

As I said you swap your queue cards for a wristband which is later used to get your ticket. Get to the front of the queue and you have an option for Centre Court, Court 1, Court 2 or Grounds Pass tickets. It was amusing to see that a few people had clearly been staying overnight at Wimbledon for the whole week if the number of wristbands on their wrists were any indication – talk about dedicated. Strangely a lot of people around us opted merely for Grounds Passes which seemed a waste of the time spent overnight. They could have got the same ticket joining the queue at 9am in the morning!

By 9am we were in. Like Disneyland and Disneyworld Wimbledon operates a line drop situation. They let you in to a certain point, including of course the Wimbledon shop, and then there are chain barriers to stop you getting further. By 10.30 they drop the chains and then it’s a rush to get seating on the outside courts (all unreserved.) As it turned out tennis wasn’t scheduled to start until noon on the outside courts but play didn’t end up starting until much later. We had some seats on Court 18 and I was hoping to catch Aussie Casey Dellacqua play a few games of her third round match but for some reason there was a delay in the start so we gave up and decided to grab some lunch instead before taking our Court 1 seats.

We ended up going for Court 1 tickets over Centre Court due to the line up of:

– Lleyton Hewitt (AUS) v Simone Bolelli (ITA)
– Jie Zheng (CHN) v Ana Ivanovic (SRB)
– Marat Safin (RUS) v Andreas Seppi (ITA)

Centre Court had a few stars on it too (including Roger Federer, Serena Williams, Amelie Mauresmo, Mario Ancic and David Ferrer) but I really wanted to see Lleyton and also the new women’s world number one, and potential new pin-up girl, Ana Ivanovic play.

Rain was a bit of an enemy today but not as much as last year (when we only got to see a couple of hours tennis the entire 9 hour day.) It delayed the start of the tennis on Court 1 for about an hour and a half and then tennis was on and off a bit for the rest of the day. So, we saw two completed matches with Lleyton triumphing over his opponent (I was very pleased about that. I was also pleased to see his wife Bec Hewitt in the stands) but sadly for the women’s number one, Ana Ivanovic, it was not a good day. She was soundly beaten by her smaller opponent Jie Zheng who really stepped up to the plate and took it to Ana. It seemed Ana had no answers to the little power-house who fully deserved to win the match. It was nice to see, however, that Ana was still a good sport at the end waiting to walk off together with her opponent at match end.

Finally we also saw Marat Safin start his match against Italian Andreas Seppi. Marat has been a kind of dark horse this tournament. The former world number one has been plagued with injuries, recent poor form and has a dislike of the grass so he was not expected to threaten this tournament. However his play today against the higher seeded (29th) opponent shows that he has plenty of tricks up his sleeve that could take him nearly all the way.

We didn’t stay to the end of Wimbledon as we were all quite tired and didn’t feel up to dealing with the crowds but I think I could say that this overnight experience was a success. We got the tickets we wanted, had a great time camping and also we got to see some awesome tennis. I can’t wait until next year … having said that I’ll still be entering the ballot come December!