So, where does 007 live, then?

Looking for James Bond in London

London is an amazing city. What an understatement is that! The world's most popular tourist destination and with a history of many hundreds of years, one-time capital of an empire on which the sun never set; and yet for me the best bit is not the large-scale "world city" nature of the UK's capital but the many, many smaller aspects of a city in which millions of people live and work, bring up families, shop and drink and dine. I have never lived there and although I am a very frequent visitor there is still much I have not seen and experienced. Britain has many great cities and towns and I enjoy all of them greatly and visit when I can, but none compares with London for the variety and significance of what they contain.

221b Baker Street, apparently

I am hoping to write a little series of posts about London and am starting with one of its literary connections. There are many to choose from: Sherlock Holmes, Paddington Bear, Hercule Poirot, Harry Potter and many, many more. Harry Potter you cannot miss at Kings Cross as there is now a gift shop, and an enormous queue to be photographed with a trolley embedded in a wall, and Sherlock Holmes has a museum at 221B Baker Street where he is supposed to have lived, but I have chosen to look for James Bond as he is much more difficult to find, and the search can be interesting.

Hatton Garden, where Bond's infiltration of the diamond-
smuggling gang began in Diamonds Are Forever

The nearest you get to a large grey building, but far too
recent for Bond's office!

There are many references in the Bond books to locations around the world, and two of the books would take you to Switzerland if you want to go and have a look there! Bond lives and has his office in London, though, and London gets more of a mention than anywhere else. Lets start with his office: it is important to dismiss from your mind the recent films showing the shiny new MI6 building on the south bank: this post-dates Fleming's books by many decades. According to Ian Fleming, Bond's HQ is in the big grey building overlooking The Regent's Park: to go looking for it, choose a warm, sunny spring or summer day and walk around the park looking for a large grey building old enough for Fleming to have known it. While the nearest Underground station is Regents Park, that is not necessarily the best to use, depending on where you are coming from, but it is not far from Baker Street if you're hotfoot from Sherlock Holmes! Now, I don't think there is any large grey office block overlooking The Regent's Park, but a great urban ramble can be had looking for it! What you will see are many glorious cream-stucco neo-classical buildings that will take your breath away, a lot of wonderful open space and shady trees (fans of Diamonds Are Forever will see what I did there) and one of the best zoological gardens in the world.

A blank drawn on Bond's office, how about looking for his home? Fleming gives us his address, so that looks a bit more promising, not just a vague description: we are looking for 61 Horseferry Road. So, out with the A-Z or your smartphone's map app and ... there are two Horseferry Roads! I have visited both, and both a worth a visit, although they are very, very different. Many think the one in Limehouse is the right one, and it is hard to say because, like the rest of this part of London, it has changed enormously since the Bond books were written. The smart marina at Limehouse Basin will have been a working dock in Fleming's time, and the river would have been extremely busy. To see it, take the Docklands Light Railway to Limehouse and walk along Branch Road towards the Thames: Horseferry Road is the road at the end, running parallel to the river one block away. If there is a number 61, it is (now, at any rate) in a very unBond-like block of flats. It is fun to imagine what it was like mid-twentieth century, though.

61 Horseferry Road, Westminster: space for a Bentley here?

So, let's go west and find the other Horseferry Road: this one is much better known, largely because many of us will have heard in various news reports of Horseferry Road Magistrates Court. It is not far from Parliament and is, perhaps interestingly, near the current office of MI5, but although this was also their HQ in the 1930s, they were elsewhere when Fleming was writing the Bond stories. Victoria, St James's Park or Westminster would be the nearest Underground stations: choosing Westminster you get to see the Houses of Parliament and some of the river on your way there (and, if you know where to look, the car park ramp used in the opening sequence to The Prisoner, cult TV series!). It is easy to walk along Horseferry Road and look for number 61, but again it is in a block of flats, but this time perhaps a little more Bond-like. It seems to me that Fleming has deliberately been vague about these places while sounding specific: you feel the London atmosphere in his descriptions but the places just are not there when you go to look. For me, the Westminster one is more convincing than Limehouse: I cannot see a Bentley owner in Limehouse in the 1950s.

There are other places in the capital mentioned in the books, among them Shooters Hill, the A2 out into Kent when Bond drove off in search of Goldfinger, and the place where Drax set up as the target for the Moonraker ... which makes me think that maybe Kent is a good place to go looking for Bond sites, too, and one is definitely there to be seen, at Reculver Towers. Do let me know in the comments of any that you have tracked down, or whether you have different views on Bond's residence and workplace.

You may like to see:

• So we meet again, Mr Bond in which I go on a secret mission with M and Q ...
• I've been expecting you, Mr Bond in which I explore one of the Swiss film locations

There'll Be Bluebirds Over the White Cliffs of Dover

"Sailors" buying tickets for an "essential journey" on the
Severn Valley Railway at a forties weekend

I write in my fourth week of confinement to my home, save for the essential daily exercise (which is in fact rather less than daily because we have found plenty to do at home and don't always drag ourselves out!) and the essential occasional delivery of groceries etc to a relative in his nineties who is not going out at all. As the so-called coronavirus "lockdown" continues I am really missing the freedom to travel, even if only to the next town! By now three trips to London for various purposes have not happened, a wedding next month will not be happening, and Easter in Canterbury did not happen, and nor will the planned group outing to the brewery at Wainfleet All Saints.

Worst of all is not knowing whether our special tours planned for later in the summer to mark our fortieth wedding anniversary will happen: nothing has been cancelled yet and all bookings still stand for the time being, but no-one knows whether that will continue to be the case. meanwhile I have no idea when I shall be able to book Advance rail tickets and no inclination to make firm plans for any further trips. There is still a booking for a tour of Italy in the autumn and I hope that is far enough in the future to go ahead, but who knows? If there is a second wave of the Covid-19 outbreak then perhaps autumn tours will also be at risk. Ironically, that tour was supposed to be happening right now but had already been postponed for other reasons!

So I am stuck at home, neither travelling nor enjoying my time planning any travel except in the vaguest sense of thinking about where to go and when "when all this is over," as people keep saying, reminiscent, so I understand, of wartime! Our mental list, which I really must get round to writing down, will have to be ticked off a bit faster once we are able to leave home again, and I fear that the railway service will not be quite the same - how sad that so much investment will leave travel companies, like every other business, with little or no income for so long. What will train travel be like "when all this is over"?

One thing I have been doing, and much quicker than I imagined possible, is constructing my new model railway layout which is a reminder of holidays in Switzerland and based upon the RhätischeBahn in Graubunden canton. I hope to write separate series of posts about that in due course. Meanwhile, I thought I would write a piece now on the (vague) plans for where to go when this is all over - bearing in mind that it could be any time of any year and that the UK and other nations will not necessarily open up together and that "Brexit" may yet complicate things. I have just applied to renew my passport because although it does not expire until next March I may need to have six-months' validity beyond a travel date after September ...

United Kingdom Vague Plans

Whatever else we do, there must be a holiday in Britain some time, surely? The current plans for the summer stand for now, with hotels booked in Edinburgh and Chichester and on the Purbeck peninsula in Dorset, and a Royal Scotsman tour of the Scottish highlands. No other train tickets have been bought but I would now be thinking about it, and whether I should also book a hotel on the Isle of Wight, as we have done the last few years, to precede Chichester. Indeed I am thinking about whether I should book that hotel - provided that I can cancel it again if necessary. And should we drive to Dorset in case the trains are not back to something like normal? Meanwhile, though, we can begin to plan next year!

A priority next year will be to book again anything we have not been able to do of our Ruby Wedding celebration tours, that is the Royal Scotsman and the country hotel in Dorset with all the family, but we do not yet know if we shall need to do that! Otherwise, we have yet to visit the English Lakes, easy with a change of train at Birmingham New Street for us, and we'd like to go to Liverpool, for which I had already begun basic gathering of information. I am also beginning to miss Cornwall, so it is time to go there once more, perhaps trying the refreshed Night Riviera service, assuming it resumes after all this is over ... And local trips to East Anglia and Lincolnshire will be back on the impulse-travel list!

Europe Vague Plans

Assuming that the Italy trip in the autumn is OK, we can plan other trips to the continent, but if that is cancelled we shall rely on Great Rail Journeys to come up with something similar for next spring, again, assuming the business is still operating then.

We were also intending to return to Le Locle in late spring to enjoy the lake at Les Brenets when it still has plenty of water in it from the Jura meltwater and to do a little more ancestor research. So that would be the trips "hung over" from this year. Otherwise we should like to return to the French Riviera and I think that would be a fitting celebratory tour when this is all over, an emphatic return to normal - but it remains to be seen, of course, whether there is enough demand for travel for all that still to be available.

I do hope that the railways will be able to bounce back. Less commuting, maybe, as people learn to work from home when they can, but if people can also learn to enjoy the world as it is with fewer cars on the road and fewer aeroplanes in the sky, then just perhaps the railways and buses can come into their own, once we have the confidence to sit near strangers again. A world of just five weeks ago seems almost as remote now as the 1940s ...

Is It a Bus? Is It a Tram?

The Cambridge Guided Busway

I have been unfortunate enough to need and fortunate enough to receive treatment at the Royal Papworth Hospital over the last couple of years, and this month I attended an outpatients clinic at which I was discharged fit and well. The hospital used to be in the village of Papworth Everard, difficult (although not impossible) to reach by public transport, and mostly I had been taken by car for my treatments and consultations, but it has recently moved to wonderful new premises in Cambridge on the Biomedical Campus where Addenbrookes Hospital has been for many years. This is now a cinch by public transport from my home in Stamford: a train ride and a quick bus connection, but we decided to make a short break of the trip and arranged to stay with friends in the village of Over, a few miles outside Cambridge, after my clinic appointment. We used to live in Over which then had an infrequent and lengthy bu route to and from Cambridge, and although there is still an infrequent service which goes through the village, there is a stop a short walk away on the Cambridge Guided Busway which has fast and frequent buses much like a tram service, and rather than take our car we thought we'd give this a go.

This time my clinic was not until 3 o'clock in the afternoon, but we set off for Cambridge in the morning with the idea of spending some time together, including lunch, in the city and then my wife could shop while I went off to the hospital. We would then reconvene for our visit to our friends, letting them have our ETA when we boarded our guided bus.

For once we did not book our train tickets in advance, for this is a local service to us and there was little to be gained by early booking. We bought Anytime Returns between Stamford, where we live, and Cambridge, giving us complete flexibility over our timing and allowing break of journey if we decided (which we didn't!) to visit, say, Ely, on our way home, and for my wife a PlusBus ticket for the two days - I am now old enough to have free bus travel anyway. We bought coffee and biscuits from the trolley on the train when it came through our carriage just after Peterborough.

We spent the journey completing some of puzzles in The Times and gazing out of the window: the amount of water in the Fens was quite astonishing after the very wet winter we have had, but no flooding except in the wash lands that are intended to flood when rainfall is high. Soon Ely Cathedral was in view, and then the gorgeous view of Ely over the marina as we approached the station. Soon after that we were leaving the train at Cambridge and making our way to the array of bus stops to find the next bus into the city centre. There was one within five minutes and although it crawled a bit through the traffic it was not long before we were dropped right in the heart of the city. We had our lunch at the Michaelhouse café which we have visited before and then walked together to where I would take my bus to the Royal Papworth Hospital.

In the city centre the guided buses look just like any other bus on the streets, with route letters rather than numbers, but the stopping points are few with the intention of making them a little bit faster, I suppose. I waited at the stop and my bus came along, next stop Cambridge Railway Station, back the way we had come, and after the stop there I was surprised to see that the very next stop on the information display was Royal Papworth Hospital, and when it left the rail station the bus was on the guided busway and accelerated up to somewhere over 50 mph, feeling much like a tram. It stopped right outside an entrance clearly provided for the convenience of bus users: I was too early to check in for my appointment! No problem: the waiting area not only had comfortable armchairs but also a workspace with table equipped with electric sockets, and a coffee bar, so I bought coffee, plugged in my MacBook and wrote up my previous blog post! After coffee I took my appointment letter to the check-in terminal and scanned its barcode, answered the ridiculous questions about my racial origin etc (who needs to know that?) and went back to continue by writing, but within a few moments I was called for my ECG and that was the end of blogging for today.

My shadow photographing the bus on which I arrived in the
centre of Cambridge after my hospital visit! 

Once I had seen the consultant I went out to the bus stops and tried to ascertain when and where my bus back to the city would be departing. Information posted was just timetables; a map or a simple, "Buses to the city centre and St Ives from this stop," would have been good. Not everyone who comes here lives and Cambridge and knows what is where ... anyway, I was soon aboard a fast bus for the city centre, shared my location with my wife on WhatsApp and was soon reunited with her. We walked to the bus station at Drummer Street and looked for the next guided bus that would take us to visit our friends. The Bus Checker app on our iPhones is very handy for this sort of thing. When using buses in strange places I would not want to be without it. Even so, the stops here had very good live information and I am sure we'd have been OK. Once through the streets and out of town we joined the busway and zipped through the countryside like a train - not surprising, this is a former railway line, just like many a tramway.

Guided bus from Cambridge bus station arrives at
Swavesey bus stop

We were met by car at the bus stop (or is it a station?) at Sawavesey and driven the short distance to our friends home, handed over our gifts from Lincolnshire and enjoyed their hospitality, and the following morning, after a filling breakfast with them we made our way through the village on foot, streets once familiar when we lived there but now fading in our memory, and then walked to the station bus stop and awaited the next bus through to the rail station in Cambridge for our train home. Not all buses go to the rail station; some, like the one on which we had arrived, terminate at Drummer Street bus station, so we needed one that would go through. Route diagrams and information at the stop made this simple, and we showed our respective passes and boarded. We soon worked out as we approached that rail station that if we hurried we would catch a train home that was scheduled to depart within five minutes of our bus arriving - easy: no need to run, just keep going purposefully!

The train was not crowded and we had good seats together and resumed our Times puzzles as we sped home. The refreshment trolley came to us just as the train left Cambridge: great! We realised that it was four o'clock and we had had no lunch, so filling had our breakfast been, but it was fading now and we were able to enjoy sandwiches and drinks from the trolley at a very reasonable price. We thanked the host for being so timely, although it was, of course, simply good fortune that he was there just at that moment! And so to home: after all that we had done we treated ourselves to a taxi home from the station this time, and it was good to be back and with the prospect of no more appointments at this wonderful hospital, having been made well by their world-class expertise.