Wimbledon As I'd wanted to go to Wimbledon last year but couldn't go due to work and plans already made for the weekends, I was determined to get there this year. So I took a day off work and headed off with Meg earlyish one Tuesday morning, catching the tube and bus to Wimbledon before walking through the town to tennis centre. Access to the centre, 1st and 2nd courts operates on a ballot system but to get in to watch the outside courts, you need to queue on the day itself. The benefit of going during the week was that the queue wasn't as long. Friends who went last year left at 5am on a Saturday to get in whereas Meg and I left at 7:30am. By the time we'd arrived and queued we were entering the grounds just before 10:30am, which is when they open the courts. Play on the outside courts starts at 11am. Wimbledon has 18 courts in total so plenty to choose between when you have a ground pass. As we went armed with Aussie flags, Meg and I were determined to find an Aussie game to watch and cheer on. Looking at the board, we didn't recognise any players until I noticed that there was an Aussie doubles match on. It was the over 35's and had Wally Mazur and John Fitzgerald so we decided to go there. We got a seat right on the court and the match was good. It was funny as the players were cracking jokes with each other and the crowd, but still playing good tennis. Oh and we nearly got hit by the tennis balls numerous times. By that time it was lunchtime so we went to Henman Hill (I think it's only called Henman Hill cuz he's the only half decent player they have at the moment - despite the fact that he's never made it past the semis at Wimbledon!) and had our sandwiches and fruit and watched the Serena Williams game on the big screen for a while. She walloped a 16 year old from France. We then headed back over to the courts and stumbled across the big excitement for the day. And it was (and you're going to laugh - but I have to say in my defense that it's because I'm over here and Henman hysteria is sweeping England - or as one newspaper put it "Our last sporting hope" after the defeat of the football and union teams) we saw Henman practicing on one of the courts. So I moved over closer to get some photos and video footage and suddenly found myself surrounded by the English press taking photos for the papers. Meg said it was the funniest thing she'd seen and wished she had her camera to get a photo of it - me with my little digital taking photos, surrounded by about 7 men with huge cameras. And I mean surrounded cuz I couldn't get out until they'd finished taking photos! On the video footage I have, you can hear the clicks of the cameras. We then wandered on and watched some more doubles matches before we decided to try our luck at court 3. If you get up in the back row in the stands at court 3 and stand up, you can see over to court 2 where Todd Woodbridge was currently playing. Unfortunately we didn't get to the back row but got to watch a great women's doubles match. We were surprised when we managed to catch the 16year old who'd been beaten by Serena earlier playing doubles with Mary Pearce. That was a great game, very close and exciting. By that stage we'd had too much sun and - shock horror! -hadn't been rained on at Wimbledon so Meg and I decided it was time to head home. It had been a great day, we'd seen some great tennis and soaked up the brilliant atmosphere. And I'd managed to get to Wimbledon and see the one sport that I've always enjoyed watching and playing.