james bond tour offered by back-roads touring co.

TENTATIVE ITINERARY	NIGHTSTOP
DAY ONE - Wednesday
Donning dark glasses, trilby and heavy overcoats, we’ll start with the capital and, unseen, follow Bond’s trail through London! We’ll see where Fleming worked and lived, uncovering HQs of the intelligence communities, SOE, SIS,MI5 and MI6. Using a manual written by a Soviet spy, we’ll discover sites that have authentic espionage links; places favoured by the spies for covert surveillance, ‘dead letter drops’ and surreptitious assignations… meanwhile, you’ll also be seeing sites linked to famed Cold War spying scandals, with people like Philby and Mclean featuring. We’ll see the Soviet Embassy, the place where the poisoned tipped umbrella killing took place, and a café popular with all sides because of its good vodka! For good measure, we’ll throw in a host of Bond film locations. And before dinner, Martinis, shaken, of course!	London
DAY TWO - Thursday
This morning we begin with a visit to the Imperial War Museum. Here we’ll visit both the UK's only permanent espionage exhibition and that celebrating the life of Ian Fleming. Next, we drive to Dover, where the cliffs conceal myriad underground secret tunnels. The route we follow, ironically though some of the prettiest Kent countryside from Maidstone to Dover and through Canterbury, is that followed by Bond in ‘Moonraker’ in pursuit of the evil rocket scientist, Sir Hug Drax… And we’ll stand on those very cliff tops beside Dover, between Kingsdown and St Margaret’s Bay, where Bond battled with the megalomaniac villain!	Dover
DAY THREE - Friday
Another book, ‘Goldfinger’, also had scenes set here at nearby Sandwich Golf Course where Fleming was a member. It affords us the opportunity of visiting this quaint coastal fishing village with its ancient churches, guildhall and windmill. Next, we cross the Thames to the county of Essex where we’ll find a number of fascinating sites that were a lot easier to go in and explore it now than it was when Kosygin or Brezhnev was ruling the CCCP! The county is simply littered with secret bunker sites designed to hide nuclear facilities or international eavesdropping centres. And are they still eerie! As we poke around these underground caverns or aboveground in deserted, windswept concrete facilities, you’ll feel you’re in the middle of a film set and any minute cold-eyed Eastern European style guards will appear hold back baying Alsatians! Our actual location will depend on which site provides the easiest access! Our final visit of the day is to a real jewel in the crown of espionage history, Bletchly Park, home to the fames ‘Enigma’ code breakers of WW2. This absolutely fascinating attraction boasts a number of other exhibitions and attractions, not least vintage cars, the Colossus Rebuild Project which is re-creating the world's first semi-programmable electronic computer and a 1/5 scale MkVII U-Boat used in the feature film 'Enigma'.	Bedfordshire
DAY FOUR - Saturday
For our final day we take the freeway north to the national Cold War Museum at Cosford. The new permanent exhibition hall, set amongst the hangars at Royal Air Force Museum Cosford, tells the story of the Cold War, from national, international, social/political as well as cultural perspectives. This landmark building and unique exhibition covers over 8,000sqm. Visitors will be able to see Britain’s V Bombers the Vulcan, Victor and Valiant and other aircraft suspended in flying attitudes, including a Dakota Canberra, Meteor, Lightning and Javelin. Other exhibits range from military hardware, to postcards sent across the borders of Berlin, film posters, album covers and toys, as well as life size Russian (Matryoshka) dolls are set between tanks, submarine models and aircraft such as The American F-111 and The ex-Soviet Bloc MiG21. Other exhibits focus on key aspects of the Cold War such as the Berlin Airlift, the Cuban Miss le Crisis, and the Space Race. The exhibition also includes a section of the Berlin Wall, missiles, model submarines. There’s even a statue of Lenin! We return to London from Cosford via Buckinghamshire. Pinewood Film Studio is here and while we can’t get in to see a Bond set, we can visit some of the public places in the area that have provided the backdrop for Bond location shoots.