Bridget Jones: The Edge Of Reason | 2005

Discover where the first Bridget Jones sequel was filmed around London, plus those brief jaunts to Austria and Thailand.

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Another year a brand new diary, but some things stay the same.

Yes, Bridget still living above the Globe pub at 8 Bedale Street in Borough, SE1, and the Coca Cola sign in Piccadilly Circus is still broadcasting her thoughts and keeping up the product placement deal.

Bridget is spending Christmas at her parents' home, which is still Hall's Piece, Snowshill in Gloucestershire, and Mark Darcy is wearing yet another delightful Christmas jumper.

But with the Darcy / Cleaver dilemma solved (for the moment at least), there's little more than a series of episodic sitcom-style episodes.

Having found her "happy ending", Bridget's idyllic 'Sound of Music' fantasy replaces Maria's Austrian hills with expansive views over London from Primrose Hill, north of Regent's Park.

Bridget is still doing her segments for 'Sit Up Britain', this time a skydiving assignment landing among a herd of muddy pigs on Stockers Farm, Stockers Farm Road off Harefield Road in Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire..

The farm is a popular location, previously seen as the isolated farm in which the title song is recorded in the 2018 Freddie Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody, as well as having appeared in 28 Weeks Later, Alfonso Cuarón's dystopian Children of Men, 2010's Never Let Me Go and many other films and TV shows. It's private property and not accessible to the public.

The cool-looking bar in which Bridget's well-meaning friends urge her to dump Mark, before 'The Jellyfish' makes things worse by bringing up his hot new assistant, Rebecca, is Light Bar, 233 Shoreditch High Street, E2. The name and look reflect the building’s origin as a former Victorian power station.

Suspicions raised, Bridget turns up at Mark's home to confront him only to find Rebecca there plus – in true sitcom style – a load of colleagues holding a meeting. Mark's house is 9 Kings Road in leafy Richmond, southwest London, suiting his comfortably middle-class status.

Somewhat reassured but as insecure as ever, Bridget tries out corsets at Rigby & Peller, 22A Conduit Street, in posh Mayfair, London W1, ready for a prestigious Law Council Dinner with Mark.

On the big night, their cab pulls up on Belvedere Road, SE1, at the southern end of Westminster Bridge. It seems the dinner is being held in the old County Hall building on the South Bank.

Opened in 1922 as the headquarters of London County Council, and subsequently home to the GLC, the building now houses the Sea Life London Aquarium, hotels, restaurants and other attractions. The other Belvedere Road entrance, by the way, was seen as the 'New York' hi-rise apartment of Frank D’Amico (Mark Strong) in Matthew Vaughn's 2010 Kick-Ass.

The smart interior, where Bridget almost comes into her own during the trivia quiz with her knowledge of pop culture, isn’t County Hall but the Great Hall of One Great George Street, SW1, west of Parliament Square in Westminster.

It’s headquarters of the Institution of Civil Engineers, which has proved an adaptable location over the years, previously seen as the 'British War Office' in Patty Jenkins’ 2017 Wonder Woman, as the 'National Gallery in Bean and also featured in two Best Picture Oscar winners, Richard Attenborough's Gandhi and as the 'Liberal Club, Portland, Oregon', where Louise Bryant (Diane Keaton) first sees Jack Reed (Warren Beatty) in Reds.

The formal dinner only exacerbates the piddling difference in social class and afterwards, Bridget and mark end up arguing about "upper middle class twits" while strolling home along the Thames Embankment. Geographically unlikely but picturesque with Tower Bridge illuminated in the background.

All is soon patched-up and they’re off for a romantic mini-break in Austria, only for Bridget to discover that Rebecca just happens to be there too.

The ski resort is Lech am Arlberg, a mountain village on the River Lech at the foot of the Omeshorn in the westernmost Austrian state of Vorarlberg.

Here they stay at the five-star Hotel Arlberg, Tannberg 187, 6764 Lech, Austria, in the town’s main street. Nice if you can afford it. In the 1990s, the hotel became a regular for Princess Diana and her children.

Accidentally skiing into town and finding herself in a chemist shop, Bridget buys a pregnancy test kit. The pharmacist stood on Tannberg, directly across the River Lech from the famous Strolz sports store, but it’s since been redeveloped.

Back in the UK, Bridget's parent are planning to reaffirm their wedding vows, shopping for appropriate outfits at Debenhams, which stood at 334-348 Oxford Street, W1, until the company folded. The once-famous department store is no more than a memory as the endless redevelopment of Oxford Street saw the building demolished.

Problems are rekindled at the TV station when it turns out that teaming Bridget with old flame Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant) for a travelogue series involves a trip to Thailand – for the two of them.

Not surprisingly, their approaches to the country are wildly different. Bridget talks of "spiritual succour and karmic rest" on the steps of Phra Pathom Chedi, a Buddhist stupa (monument) in the Wat Phra Pathommachedi Ratcha Wora Maha Wihan, a temple in the town centre of Nakhon Pathom, a few miles west of Bangkok.

Meanwhile Daniel is exploring the delights of Soi Cowboy, a short street of go-go bars and massage parlours, running between Asok Montri Road and Soi Sukhumvit just north of Sukhumvit Road.

He redeems himself somewhat reciting poetry as they pass the village of Ko Panyi, a floating fishing village built on stilts by Malay fisherman, during a cruise through Phang Nga Bay. The Bay’s spectacular limestone outcrops rising from the sea will be familiar from 1974 Bond movie The Man With The Golden Gun.

Staying at Nai Yang Beach in Phuket, Bridget almost falls for the charms of Daniel again until she comes to her senses. By the way – the 'Thai restaurant' was just a set built for the movie.

Trouble at the airport on the way home sees Bridget locked up for suspected smuggling, with Mark having to pull strings to get her freed.

Safely back in London, Mark finally confronts Daniel at an exhibition in the Serpentine Gallery in Kensington Gardens, once the private gardens of Kensington Palace, west of Hyde Park.

The gallery doesn't have a fountain conveniently alongside, so once the pair stumble outside, that's the exterior of the Pump House in the Italian Gardens, about half a mile to the north near Bayswater Road, re-dressed with fake brickwork. This enables their Mark’s challenge of fisticuffs to end up splashing about in the Italian Fountains.

Discovering how instrumental Mark had been in getting her freed from the Thai jail, Bridget is off to confront Mark again, but for a very different reason this time.

She takes a cab to Mark's chambers, arriving in West Smithfield, where she's drenched by traffic splashing through puddles. Twice.

Behind her you can make out the famous Smithfield Meat Market.

In fact, the entrance to Mark Darcy's august chambers is the Henry VIII Gatehouse entrance to St Bart's Hospital (short for St Bartholomew’s). Look carefully and you can just glimpse the legs of Henry’s statue above the gate. This is the main, and the oldest, entry to the famous hospital.

The Priory of St Bartholomew, founded along with the hospital, was one of the institutions closed under Henry’s Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1534. After much petitioning, the King granted the hospital to the City of London, hence the erection of this gate in 1702.

If you’re in the area, the gate is just along from the Sir William Wallace Memorial, marking the place where the Scots hero was tortured and executed in 1305, and the Church of St Bartholomew, one of the most familiar film locations in the capital (Robin Hood Prince of Thieves, Four Weddings and a Funeral and many, many others).

Once inside mark’s chambers, the wood-panelled and stained glass interior is that of Two Temple Place, just off the Victoria Embankment, WC2. Built in 1895 for New York-born politician and hotelier William Waldorf Astor, it’s also known as the Astor House.

It was previously seen as the Mayor of Gotham's mansion staked out by The Riddler in Matt Reeves's 2022 The Batman and, in 2014, it stood in for ‘Caxton Hall’ for the wedding of Lady Rose and Atticus Aldridge in TV’s Downton Abbey.

All ends happily with Bridget's parents renewing their vows at St James's Church, Church Lane in Shere, a few miles east of Guildford in Surrey. The picturesque village of Shere itself is no stranger to the screen, having appeared in The Ruling Class, Die Monster Die and Beauty and the Beast, The Holiday and A Matter of Life and Death.

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