Wimbledon: Rain or Shine!

Wimbledon is very different to most major sporting events in the way that the tickets allocated. A certain amount of tickets are available for the show courts - Centre Court, Number One and Number Two courts - on each day of the tournament via a public ballot (lottery). To be entered into this ballot, all you have to do is send in your details and a self-addressed envelope between the start of August and mid December. If you're successful, then you'll get notification in February or March, with details of the date and court that you've been allocated tickets for. You can then decide whether you want to take them or not and if you do, that's when you pay for them.

But what's unique about Wimbledon is that even if you don't strike it lucky in the ballot, there is still hope. Every day you can just turn up and queue for entry into the grounds and for the remaining tickets for the show courts. Realistically, if you want one of those show court tickets, you have to be there early. It's not uncommon for people to camp out overnight and the lines often stretch around the grounds, with thousands waiting and hoping to get in on the busiest days.

Fortunately we didn't have to go down this route, as we were lucky enough to be allocated top-priced tickets for Number One court for the first Saturday of the tournament. Of course, I eagerly accepted those and paid for them. It's not a cheap day out, but then, that applies to most major sporting tournaments. Besides, on a good day, you could easily enjoy ten hours of tennis.

It became fairly obvious though as the day dawned that there was no way we would be seeing that much action. The clouds greeted us with rain as we parked and that continued on and off throughout the morning. The gates usually open at 10:30 am and play will then begin on the outside courts, numbers 3 through to 19, shortly afterwards at 11:00 am. If you've just got a ticket to get into the grounds and want to grab a seat to see the action on the outside courts, you'll need to move quickly. By the time we got past the very thorough security checks (a lot of places could learn from Wimbledon on that count!), a lot of the seats on court 13 were already taken. It's only that court and court 3 that have large amounts of seating. The others have very limited seats and mainly standing room only views.