In the winter of 1966, the crew of a Royal Navy frigate anchored in Gibraltar Harbour stood shivering in tropical summer uniforms, sliding a shrouded dummy off the deck again and again. The body refused to sink. They were filming the funeral of James Bond, and the camera needed it to vanish cleanly into what audiences would believe was Hong Kong. It took several cold, sodden takes before 007 finally went under. Twenty years later, in 1987, the Rock would kill Bond's colleague instead and crown a brand new agent. Gibraltar is the only place on earth that has both buried one James Bond and introduced another, and almost every location is still reachable on a single self guided day. Gibraltar offered the Bond producers something almost no other location could match: a dramatic limestone monolith bristling with real military hardware, a working naval harbour, and a famously cooperative British garrison, all packed into a few square kilometres of British territory. For a film series built on espionage and the armed forces, that combination was pure gold. The result is two distinct Bond moments, in 1967 and 1987, both genuinely shot here rather than faked elsewhere. It helps to know from the outset that Bond films routinely stitch several countries into one apparently seamless sequence. Gibraltar supplied the real, recognisable exteriors in both films, while a handful of impossible shots were completed far away. Knowing which is which means you can stand at the authentic spots without feeling cheated, and you can savour exactly where the magic was bolted on afterwards. The 1987 film opens cold, with no Bond in sight at first. Three Double O agents parachute onto the Rock as part of a Ministry of Defence training exercise, their brief to penetrate the radar and communications installations near the summit. They carry paint rounds; the SAS guards expect a harmless war game. Then an assassin slips into the exercise with live ammunition, kills agent 004 and several British personnel, and triggers the chase that introduces Timothy Dalton as the new 007. It is taut, brutal and unusually grounded, and principal photography on it began at Gibraltar on 17 September 1986. The sequence was filmed across the upper reaches of the Rock, with the production shooting the same short stretch of high road from many different angles to suggest a far longer pursuit. That is why the geography on screen never quite matches a real route up the Rock. The film cuts for drama, not for accuracy, which becomes part of the pleasure when you trace it on the ground. > Gibraltar is the only territory on earth that has buried one James Bond and launched another, two films and twenty years apart. The single most evocative location is the great sloping flank on the east side of the Rock. For most of the twentieth century this was the Great Gibraltar Sand Dune, a vast consolidated sand slope sheathed in corrugated iron that channelled rainwater into reservoirs cut inside the Rock. The catchments above Sandy Bay were built in stages between 1903 and 1961 to slake a thirsty fortress town, and by 1987 their strange industrial geometry made a perfect backdrop for a Cold War set piece. In the film, Bond finds the body of 004 at the foot of these catchments. If you go looking for that exact scene today you will find the slope completely transformed. The catchments were declared obsolete in 1991, when desalination gave Gibraltar a cheaper and more reliable source of fresh water. From 2001 the Gibraltar Ornithological and Natural History Society managed a phased dismantling, stripping the iron sheets and laying a biodegradable mesh to stabilise the sand, and by 2006 the face had been returned almost entirely to native vegetation. A small section of the old sheeting has been left in place so visitors can picture how the whole flank once looked. The site, now known as the Great East Side Sand Slopes, sits within the Upper Rock Nature Reserve and is best appreciated from the eastern viewpoints or from Sandy Bay below. It is a vivid example of how the Rock keeps changing; our [Rock of Gibraltar guide](/blog/rock-of-gibraltar-guide) sets the nature reserve in its wider context. On screen the agents drift down onto the high ground near the summit, and you can stand in almost exactly that airy world today. The cable car climbs to the Top Station, where the upper paths open onto dizzying views down both flanks of the Rock, the same disorienting drop the parachutists faced. The working military aerials themselves are not a tourist site, but the terrain around them is, and a clear morning rewards you with the full sweep of the east side and the Strait beyond. For the energetic, the Mediterranean Steps climb the southern and eastern face of the Rock to near the summit, threading the most vertiginous ground in the whole reserve. It is a demanding walk and proper footwear is essential, but it is the most immersive way to feel the terrain the opening sequence trades on.