I was running desperately low on clean clothes after eight days, and I never want to pay for hotel laundry if I can avoid it, so I managed to track down a laundromat within a couple of kilometres. It only cost about 10 pounds for the lot, probably good for one t-shirt and a pair of socks back at the hotel. The only downside is that it takes an hour or two out of your day or night.
I think a decommissioned train track has been turned into a tram route in South London, which we were able to take from East Croydon bound for Mitcham and Wimbledon! They are still doing upgrades to the tram route, as in some parts it was still only a single track and you have to wait for the tram coming back the other way. I found the correct bus leaving from Wimbledon city centre, only it soon took a turn in the opposite direction and we were in front of a greyhound track instead of a tennis centre...
By luck a bus was just coming back the other way and we arrived at Wimbledon tennis centre just in the time for the tour that had been booked earlier in the day. The combined tour and museum ticket was a bit pricey, something like 20 plus pounds for a 1.5 hour tour and access to the museum.
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| Outside centre court, waiting for the tour (and rain) to start. |
On the tour we had this cheerful old English man who was quite entertaining and did well with facts and information along the way, we started at Court 1 which is possibly the biggest court other than centre court, I forget exactly. The tournament was only completed a few weeks ago but they were already regrowing the grass for next year. It started raining as we continued on around the outside courts, visiting the "famous" Court 18 where the longest ever match was played a few years ago. We also got to walk through some of the inside areas including the interview and media rooms, before finally making it to centre court. Some fun facts from the tour:
- There is only about 500-600 members of the club
- The annual fee is less than 200 pounds
- You need a recommendation from 4 existing members just to begin a membership application
- So it's basically impossible to join
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| Some of the courts, and the precious grass on "Henman Hill". |
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| Another patch of grass that becomes Court 18. |
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| Courts 2 to 15, or something like that. |
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| Federer lost again. |
I didn't really like how exclusive the membership was, and it didn't sound like it was much easier just to get tickets to the tournament. After the tour we quickly roamed around the tennis museum, which I expected to be good since tennis has a pretty rich history, both at Wimbledon and more widely. The museum was just average though, it had a lot of really old stuff dating back to the origins of the game, where I would have liked a bit more focus on the last 20-30 years. There was a room with a collection of old posters and advertising which was good, and the men's and women's trophy at the end was the highlight.
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| Old tennis balls. |
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| Old tennis racquets. |
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| The men's trophy. |
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| The women's "trophy" plate. |
After lunch I took the train up to London Bridge in the city centre. We got tickets to the Tower Of London (not an actual tower), where the staff warned that you need three hours to visit everything and it was closing in half of that, but we went on anyway. Again the admission was very pricey, in the range of 20 pounds or close to 50 dollars.
We started at the building containing the crown jewels, apparently everyone else did too as the queue was about fifteen minutes. It was quite annoying that the lines inside didn't have room for overtaking easily, so you were stuck moving as fast (or slow) as everyone else ahead. There was plenty of items in the collections, some dating back to the 1600's, as it appeared that every king or queen or any other noble person had their own gear created.
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| Waterloo barracks. |
After walking around the northern exterior wall I went to the White Tower next, the big tower building in the middle of the place. It had lots of armour suits on display, slightly depressing to find that they also made them in children's sizes. There was also several rooms full of hand-held weapons and an archive of old coins. Then the southern exterior wall, which was more interesting as you could see out to the river and the Tower Bridge. Just before closing there was time to visit "Torture At The Tower", which was a big waste of time, it was just a small one with a recreation of a torture rack - at least there wasn't a big queue for that.
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| The north wall. |
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| Outside the white tower. |
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| The south wall. |
Across the road from the hotel I finally got the try the KFC Krushies drink, which I think is called Krusher here. The Skittles one sounded the best, but it was the only flavour they weren't making at the store! I had to settle for the Maltesers instead which was pretty tasty.
- London Part 2
- Tourist Rating - 6 out of 10
- Good
- Croydon and Wimbledon areas were better than expected
- One warm day at last
- Bad
- Prices didn't get any cheaper
- Slow train from the airport
- Missed Out
- Bond Street
- Oxford Street
- Picadilly Circus
- Wembley tour
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