Refried Neurons

Never in my life have I seen so many adults trying to pitch a tent for the very first time. Welcome to the famous Wimbledon queue!

It all started last Wednesday. Naively, we arrived at the queue for afternoon tickets around 6:00 PM, only to stand there for an hour before being told there were about a thousand people ahead of us. Our chances of getting in that night? Absolutely zero. We shrugged our shoulders and headed off for dinner, stumbling upon an absolutely lovely spot in East Putney called House SW15.
One glass of wine later, we somehow convinced ourselves of a brilliant plan. Instead of spending a super hot upcoming weekend driving an air-conditioned car to the coast to enjoy the lovely, cool Atlantic water, we decided the best thing to do was spend an hour and a half on a sweltering Tube, followed by 18 hours of camping in the middle of London. Sounds like a dream weekend, right?
Sitting here right now, I have to admit it sounds worse than it actually is. Sure, there are no showers, but at least the campsite is free. So, on Saturday morning, we had breakfast, wrapped up an early Teams call, and set off at 11:30 AM. All our camping gear and outfits for the match itself were squashed into our backpacks, leaving us praying we wouldn’t look like a dog’s chew toy the next day.

The Race for Silver
The second we arrived at Southfields, we rushed out of the Tube station, determined to beat all the other tent-wielding passengers on our train. And we did! P said he’d never seen me walk so fast, dodging and weaving through the crowd just to squeeze by.
But to our surprise, when we finally arrived at the grounds, we realized there was absolutely no chance of us landing in the first 500 to get Centre Court tickets. There were more tents pitched here at 1:00 PM on a Friday than there were at 7:00 PM last Wednesday. 😆 Oh well.
We made a pact: if we were in the first 1,000 (which meant getting Court 1 tickets), we’d stay. If not, we’d head straight back home, throw the tent in the car, and drive to the coast just for a change of scenery.
I must admit, I’ve never seen such a grand, official gateway reading “Welcome to the Queue!” It’s hilarious in a way, but they are incredibly organized here. I guess after so many years, they’ve figured it all out. They use two flags to manage the crowd: yellow if you’re queuing for today’s tickets, and red for the overnight campers. When we finally tracked down the supervisor with the red flag, we were told we’re 905 and 906!

It’s an odd feeling. On one hand, you’re bummed it’s not Centre Court; on the other, you’re thrilled because you just made the cut for Court 1. I guess it’s like coming in second place at Wimbledon. You made it to the finals and you’re taking home £2 million, but it could have been £4 million. I never used to understand the disappointment on the faces of silver medalists. Now I do. We got the silver medal in the queue race.

Scorching Sun and Global Neighbors
I guess we’ll take it. Wimbledon, we are coming! Or rather… sitting.
We set up our pop-up tent, said hello to our neighbors, and settled in to chill. Except for one minor detail: the sun was absolutely scorching. There wasn’t a single cloud in the sky. For anyone who still thinks London is a permanently rainy city, well, not anymore. I deeply regret not bringing a bikini because I am definitely getting a tan, just a highly specific, unintentional one. 😆

Humans are a funny species. Last year, I saw countless Instagram Reels about the queue, with comments ranging from “the best idea and best time I’ve ever had” to “this is so humiliating.” To the critics, I have no words. Wimbledon is the only Grand Slam tournament that is actually accessible to regular people. Not everyone has a spare £2,000 to drop on tennis tickets.
Some might argue they should just make all the tickets cheap. Well, someone has to pay for the event and the prize money! And honestly, even if they did lower prices, the queue would still exist. The only difference is we’d probably see Elon Musk queuing next to us, and the line would start weeks in advance instead of 24 hours. They could move it entirely online, but then whoever has the best internet bot wins the tickets. I vastly prefer the old-school way: put in the physical effort, get the ticket. Building a bot isn’t effort, especially since the person coding it usually couldn’t care less about the tennis anyway.
So, here I am, camping and chatting with random strangers. Right next to us is an Irish couple from Dublin, in front of us are some London-based Italians, and to our left is an Indian couple.
This isn’t the Indian couple’s first rodeo. They’ve already FaceTimed at least three different people to show off their elaborate setup: one tent for sleeping, one tent strictly for luggage storage, and an extra mattress just for chilling outside. It is also brutally obvious that they have a much higher temperature tolerance than us. The husband is sitting out here in thick woolen socks and black trousers, while we are desperately hunting for the tiniest sliver of shade so we don’t wake up looking like the Chinese flag tomorrow. The main issue? There is no shade.

Meanwhile, the Irish couple to our right actually flew in from the Cayman Islands. They pre-ordered all their camping gear from Decathlon, landed in London this morning, hit the collection point, and came straight here. Everyone around us seems incredibly into the sport, rattling off player names. I know one: Iga Świątek. Okay, maybe a few more, but unless your name is Djokovic, Williams, or Sabalenka, it doesn’t mean much to me.
Chatting with our international neighbors, the conversation naturally drifted to food, including, to the absolute horror of the Italians, the concept of pasta with strawberries. It’s a classic Polish summer staple born out of traditional, humble home cooking. Last year, after winning Wimbledon, Iga actually mentioned our now-infamous national dish, and the culinary world went into collective shock. We had Eurosport presenters visibly cringing during a live tasting session (to which all I can say is: you didn’t do it right, you have to mash the strawberries so the juice actually releases!), while Jamie Oliver came out and admitted it’s surprisingly good.

Glamping vs. The Reality of the Plastic Sheet
It is fascinating to watch the crowd here, most of whom have clearly never been camping in their lives. This isn’t your typical outdoor crowd; these are people who prefer linen shirts and loafers over Gore-Tex and Vibram soles (most probably don’t even know what those are).
Most would  definitely rather be staying in a 5-star hotel, too. Instead, tonight we have a 1-star hotel under the stars—minus the actual stars, because it is London, after all.
I spent a good chunk of time just watching everyone do battle with the sheets of plastic we call tents. There was a lot of intense manual reading, quite a few choice swear words, and at one point, I even saw a flying tent. Sadly, this also means most of these tents will end up straight in the bin right after the tournament, just like at music festivals. Single-use plastic, just on a massive scale.
The location itself isn’t bad, to be honest. There are a few shops around, a lovely park with a lake, and even a proper café serving iced lattes and beer.

We spent our first four hours waiting for the stewards to hand out the official queue cards. When we got ours, the numbers were 936 and 937. This means either the lady with the red flag doesn’t know how to use a clicker counter, or a few sneaky people joined their mates later on without anyone telling them off. I’d bet heavily on the latter, because that flag lady was incredibly strict about seeing your actual face before counting you!

The “Instagrammable” Wilderness
The queue seems to get crazier with every passing year. I remember my friends trying to convince me to do this ten years ago, and to this day, I can’t remember why I refused. Back then, they rocked up around 7:00 PM and still managed to get Centre Court. But now, thanks to Instagram and TikTok, this is the place to be. It’s the one queue in the world you actively brag about on social media. You post photos of the tents, your queue cards, your wristbands, and, of course, the mandatory photo under the massive “Welcome to the Queue” gateway.
You brag to the entire world that you are resilient enough to survive a night in the wilderness known as South London.
After all, you will be subjected to all sorts of urban horrors: sleeping on the hard ground, right next to strangers who might snore, zero showers, dinner courtesy of Sainsbury’s or Deliveroo.

To add to the camping terrors, our Indian neighbor has been farting so consistently—and so incredibly loudly—that people standing several meters away keep turning around to look at us with completely shocked faces.   That being said, I actually love camping.
The park café is definitely having its busiest two weeks of the year, and the same goes for all the local pizza and kebab joints.
The order of play just dropped, and Iga Świątek is scheduled for Centre Court. Just when I thought there was zero chance of us seeing her, it looks like the organizers have made Court 2 the place to be, well, at least according to everyone in our immediate vicinity. Suddenly, nobody around us wants Centre Court; they all want Court 2!
My hopes are officially back up, even if they probably shouldn’t be. All we can do now is wait it out and see what happens tomorrow morning at 8:00 AM!