My husband and are planning a trip to Wimbledon in July and are looking for suggestions on hotels and best ways to get to and from London during this busy season. Any tips are greatly appreciated!
Easiest way to get from London to Wimbledon would be by cab, but it would be expensive. What I did was take the District Line to Southfields. From there you can walk or take a city bus one or two stops (the tournament used to run a shuttle bus to the grounds, but I believe that's been discontinued). Then I joined the queue and got my ground tickets. Once inside and some of the big matches are over, they resell the Centre Court tickets so you can get tickets there and still see some big names (I saw Angelique Kerber and Agniezska Radwanska).
Tickets to Wimbledon are very hard to get hold of, you're too late to enter the ticket ballot now!
I'm assuming April has tickets; she didn't say otherwise. An easy neighborhood for you and your husband is the neighborhood by Earl's Court. Plenty of lodging options and you need to make reservations as soon as possible because as you get closer to July, the prices will keep rising.
Now you have an easy commute to the Championships. You will take the Wimbledon bound District line tube from Earl's Court to Southfields. You will NOT be going to the tube stop called Wimbledon. Then after disembarking at Southfields, walk 10 minutes to the All England Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club. No need for a taxi. This is very easy as you will be walking with lots of people.
The Wimbledon area proper is pretty generically UK suburban to greenbelt. (The All England Club has problems with foxes from a nearby large park crossing the road and damaging the grass courts. ) Agree that Earl's Court is a good location- easy Tube from there to Winbledon and easy to so many other fun things on days when you don't have tickets.
We wanted to do the Centre Court tour with our daughters after visiting the Tower of London in the morning. We thought a taxi would be the best way but what a mistake. We caught a Black Cab from the rank and he drove way out of the way west. Then when we got to Wimbledon he did not know how to find the All England Tennis Club. The fare was already £50 on the meter and the driver heard my husband ask me how much cash I had. When I answered £55, the driver pulled over to let us out, saying it was “that direction” somewhere.
Fortunately there was a map on a nearby sign. We walked three blocks to the ticket booth only to be denied entry as we were two minutes late.
We returned to London by train to Waterloo. Quick, easy, and much cheaper.