The Land Rover cliff - Ape's den, Gibraltar

"It's all so boring here Margot. There's nothing but playboys and tennis pros. If only I could find a real man..."


The car chase in the pre-title sequence of The Living Daylights comes to an abrupt end when Bond steers the Land Rover towards a cliff on the rock of Gibraltar. As the car is falling into the sea with the assassin inside, Bond opens his parachute and escapes an explosion just before landing on a luxury yacht cruising in the strait of Gibraltar.

The Land Rover chase was filmed on several locations on the rock but the particular part that is seen through the windscreen of the car can be found at the Queen's Gate, or what is known today as Ape's Den, just above Prince Ferdinand's Battery. The Land Rover is coming down on Old Queen's road and crashes into the stone wall right by the Queen's Gate, which is an opening in Charles V wall.

When driving down Queen's road in the nature reserve you should take a left and continue down Old Queen's road in order to get to this location. Queen's gate can be found after a few hundred meters from the street crossing. The road breaches through the last part of the great wall (named Charles V's wall) that runs from the top of the rock all the way down. Earlier in the chase, the Land Rover has driven through another opening of Charles V's wall, a few hundred meters up the rock. Just below the Queen's gate is Prince Ferdinand's Battery. The car running through the kiosk, scaring a number of tourists, was filmed on another location.

Prince Ferdinand's Battery - Known as Ape's Den

The Barber Macuaque apes, the top tourist attraction in Gibraltar, feature prominently in the film and one even jumps down and scares Bond as he finds the dead guard on top of the rock. They are locally known as Barbary apes despite actually being monkeys and the Macaques in Gibraltar is the only wild monkey population in the European continent.
The part of the wall where the two monkeys are watching the Land Rover is probably located somewhere along Queen's road or the Old Queen's road in the nature reserve.

The monkeys watch as the Land Rover goes over the cliff.

The legend goes that as long as the monkeys exist on Gibraltar, the territory will remain under British rule.

God save the Queen

With this post I will reach 200,000 page views since my blog inauguration in 2011. I thank all of you who enjoy this blog and follow me in the search for more Bond locations. Long live England!