A short post here just to identify Cleopatra’s Needle on the Thames by Waterloo Bridge. Bond would have sailed past here in the Q Boat in pursuit of Cigar in TWINE.
In a deleted scene, according to Gary Giblin’s book James Bond London, pg 110:
Bond was to have maneuvered the tiny Q Boat past Cleopatra’s Needle and even through the narrow gap between the Queen Mary (a ship no longer there) and Victoria Embankment, emerging unscathed on the other side of Waterloo Bridge.
Though actually staged and filmed, this sequence was cut for time. Thus, in the final edit, the action skips immediately from the Hungerford Bridge to the Waterloo Pier bit.
I’ve taken some photos of the obelisk and inserted an overhead map below. For the full article on all the locations of the River Boat chase refer to this article here.
Personally. I think it would have been rather cool to have seen Bond take evasive action and be forced to ski over the steps of Cleopatra’s Needle and come down the steps the other side. If we could remove the barriers of course.
