My first film of 2023 was a rewatch of the last Daniel Craig Bond film ‘No Time to Die’. I really enjoyed it, but reaction to it appears to have been a little divisive amongst the Bond fan community. When I looked back on the past year it seemed an apt film to start the New Year with considering how 2022 contained far more James Bond related moments than I’d expected. It was also the year when I realised that the James Bond film series has had quite an influence on my love of travel.
Mention Bond films to me and my first thoughts are of lazy Bank Holiday weekends watching Roger Moore on TV when I was little. Like Star Wars, I have no memory of there not being Bond in my life. That familiarity though has led me to think I had seen most of the Bond movies, but as I’ve learned this year, I’ve really only seen bits and pieces of some of them.
2022 saw the 60th anniversary of the release of the first Bond film ‘Dr No’ (1962) starring Sean Connery. To celebrate cinemas across the country showed all 25 films in the series in chronological order. This was a brilliant idea as many people will never have seen the earlier films on the big screen. My first Bond at the cinema was Daniel Craig in ‘Casino Royale’ back in 2005, so it was great to get the chance to see some of the older films as they were intended.
As much as we’d have liked to have seen all the films, my husband and I weren’t able commit to the full run and therefore we had to be selective. Early on we made sure we were both free to watch our favourites, Andy’s being ‘Moonraker’ and mine ‘A View to a Kill’. Both looked gorgeous on a cinema screen. Via Twitter we were invited by the ‘Really 007’ team to contribute to a James Bond podcast about the special screenings, this was a fun and interesting experience. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/really-007/id1529674193 We had to really think about why we liked or disliked something. We recorded sections for 4 podcasts, starting at about 5 minutes and getting progressively longer as we got more confident with our analysis.
‘Moonraker’ was a great to see at the cinema – it’s one of the more fantastical Bond films but looks great – the model work for the space station scenes looked amazing on the big screen. My husband and I visited some of the locations on our honeymoon in Venice in 2019 – I wrote about it here https://fromscenetoseen.wordpress.com/2019/11/29/ahh-venice/
I got a huge amount of satisfaction seeing my favourite James Bond film ‘A View to A Kill’ at the cinema. It’s the last of the Roger Moore era and probably the most family friendly of the films in the series, which maybe explains why I saw it so often on TV when I was young. Roger is nearly too old (certainly too old for the Bond girl!) but it’s a fantastic film. It’s well directed by Bond veteran John Glenn and has a glorious soundtrack by John Barry which I love.
The music and the exciting finale with the airship over the Golden Gate Bridge imprinted hard on me as a child. I think it may have influenced a long-held desire to visit San Francisco, which I did in 2007. It didn’t take much imagination to picture the Zorin dirigible gliding overhead as I walked along the bridge and took in the view. https://www.sceen-it.com/movie/168/A-View-to-a-Kill I also had a wander to see the very handsome San Francisco City Hall that had been very realistically ‘set on fire’ during the filming.
Our summer holiday this year was to the Isle of Skye, in the northwest of Scotland. It’s an area my husband had visited as a child and somewhere we’d talked about visiting once free of the Covid lockdown. On planning the trip, we were delighted to discover that our route would take us past a famous Skyfall location – well we had to visit that didn’t we?
The scene were Bond and M pause on their journey to Bond’s ancestral home is a little parking bay on the way to Glen Etive near Glen Coe. It shows up on Google Maps as ‘James Bond Skyfall Road’. We’d stayed by Loch Awe the previous night and had to drive through Glen Coe to reach Skye. Early in the morning we headed out, armed with the actual GPS co-ordinates, a selection of screengrabs and the Skyfall soundtrack playing full blast on the CD player. We were going to find it!
The actual road itself is just off the A82, the main road through the Glen, not at all remote really. The only downside was it was peak summer holiday season and a single-track road! As we drove, we passed lots of people slowly starting the day after either sleeping in their campervans or even in tents in the glen. Our fear that we would find the spot and not be able to park disappeared when we turned a corner and saw that it was empty! With the music playing we pulled up and enjoyed our moment of achievement. We then had a silly 5 minutes taking the obligatory photos with us posing as Bond by his car, in our case a Ford Focus rather than an Aston Martin but as you’ve probably gathered from this blog, we have a healthy imagination! We weren’t alone for long, as we soon heard the Bond theme playing from a car that slowly pulled up behind us, more 007 fans! With a smile we got back in the car to head off and let them have their own geeky moment.
We stayed the week in a lovely little cottage by the edge of Loch Alsh overlooking the Isle of Skye. It was only 7 minutes’ drive (we timed it) from what is claimed to be the most photographed castle in Scotland; the ridiculously photogenic Eilean Donan Castle. Most famous for featuring in the film ‘Highlander’ it was also used in the Pierce Brosnan Bond film ‘The World is not Enough’ doubling as the temporary headquarters for MI6. One evening as the was sun setting, we jumped in the car and put the David Arnold soundtrack CD on full blast and drove back to the castle for the second time that day. We ended up taking even more photos than we had in the daytime. My husband Andy tweeted David Arnold a picture and got a like!
We did catch a third and final location with a link to Bond as we headed south again and stayed overnight halfway home. We drove past the imposing HMNB Clyde located at Faslane, Gare Loch a naval base where Roger Moore’s Bond arrived by Sea King helicopter for his briefing in 1977’s ‘The Spy Who Loved Me’. We didn’t really want to get too close as it’s a still very much an active base and well, we didn’t really want to get arrested.
The re-showing of the Bond films prompted us to explore the soundtracks and the title music of the series in more depth. Andy mentioned that it was on his ‘bucket list’ to see a Bond song performed live by the original artist. As luck would have it, not long after this, 5 times Bond soundtrack composer David Arnold announced he was organising a special ‘Sounds of 007’ concert at the Royal Albert Hall, London. The concert would be the culmination of the year-long 60th anniversary celebration of Bond on the big screen.
We were fortunate enough to get tickets and it was the most amazing night. We were treated to Dame Shirley Bassey herself, looking terribly glamorous in a gold sparkly dress, belting out ‘Goldfinger’ and ‘Moonraker’. At the age of 85 she was still able to completely captivate the audience and received standing ovations for each song. Lulu sang ‘Man with the Golden Gun’ and Garbage performed ‘The World is not Enough’. We even got to see Skin from Skunk Anansie give her interpretation of ‘Live and Let Die’ she looked like she was loving every moment of her time on stage.
David Arnold himself was involved with many of the performances, appearing on stage with several of the acts. One particular highlight was a ‘dueling guitars’ session performing some of the soundtrack to ‘No Time to Die’ with legendary composer Hans Zimmer. Arnold returned later for a poignant rendition of ‘You Know My Name’ from ‘Casino Royale’ which he co-wrote with the late Chris Cornell.
We also got to see some celebrities as they arrived, various Bond girls and the lyricist Don Black (Thunderball, Diamonds Are Forever, The Man with the Golden Gun, Tomorrow Never Dies and The World Is Not Enough). Andy and I even caught a glimpse of an actual 007 when Lashanna Lynch from ‘No Time to Die’ was hurried past us. As an added bonus we’d earlier spotted the silver Rolls Royce (owned by Cubby Broccoli) and used by Patrick McNee in ‘A View to a Kill’ and Auric Goldfinger’s Rolls Royce being loaded onto an Aston Martin truck just around the corner from the Royal Albert Hall. We found out later that the cars had been used for the arrival of producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson at the concert.
There’s countless Bond locations around the capital but we hadn’t planned to look for any on this particular trip. The morning after the concert we had time to kill and took a walk around Brompton Cemetery (only a short distance from where we’d stayed in Earls Court). We knew the cemetery had been used in the Peter Capaldi era of Doctor Who but we didn’t know until we returned home that it had also been used in ‘Goldeneye’ as a Russian orthodox church. It’s almost impossible to avoid stumbling across a bond location on our holidays!
Why do I like Bond? I like the glamour, the cars and most of all the locations. Bond films always look so good and have been filmed all over the globe. Wonderful escapism for a girl from the North West of England whose most exotic childhood holidays were to Wales and Blackpool and didn’t get a passport until she was 18.
I love how James Bond can jump on a plane to anywhere in the world and the hotel always staff seem to know him. He gets the best suites, well tailored fancy clothes and exotic food. An aspirational lifestyle for sure… well apart from all the death, murder and threats of global destruction!
2023 will see further Bond viewings as I fill in the gaps in my knowledge. There are also many locations that are still on my ‘to do’ list, some more exotic than others. I’d love to visit a few more from ‘A View To a Kill’. Along with the Golden Gate Bridge I’ve been to the Eiffel Tower which Grace Jones’s character May Day jumps off. There’s a great story on the Blu-Ray extras ‘Making of’ documentary about an over enthusiastic stuntman annoying the Parisian authorities and nearly scuppering filming in the city.
Of the three main locations still to visit two are probably achievable for us. The Amberley Museum and Heritage Centre in West Sussex which was used as the entrance to Zorin’s mine in Silicon Valley could easily be reached if we take a break to England’s South Coast. https://www.amberleymuseum.co.uk/
A trip across the English Channel would get us to the stunningly beautiful Château de Chantilly in France used as Zorin’s palace and stables and is just an hour outside Paris. https://chateaudechantilly.fr/en/chateau/
Stacey’s house might be the least accessible as it’s quite a long haul trip to the USA Dunsmuir House – Wikipedia but of course if we were ever in the area we’d certainly make a detour to visit.
James Bond will return….
From scene to seen 