Ian Fleming used to welcome his guests in an idiosyncratic way. When he heard they were on their way from the airport or the harbour, he instructed his staff to throw some red meat into the sea. A horse carcass would do. Anything bloody.

Ian Fleming’s old garage has been converted into a bedroom suite with a giant film screen and massive bar

When his guests arrived, he invited them to go and cool down by having a relaxing swim off his private beach. He pointed them down the steps to the sand and the Caribbean Sea where several shark fins were circling close to shore in a large blood slick.

Fleming wrote all 13 James Bond books at Goldeneye, his home in Jamaica. The first, Casino Royale, written in 1951, was “an antibody” to getting married for the first time at the age of 43.

His bride was Lady Rothermere, the former wife of the British newspaper proprietor. Friends teased Fleming that he was her only fan.

The villa and grounds are now a 52-acre boutique resort complete with spa, two libraries, a treehouse-style restaurant and less sharks. Fleming bought the property in “the beautiful banana port of Orcabessa” for £4,000 (€5,000), having originally been sent to Jamaica by British naval intelligence to stop U-boat attacks in the Caribbean.

Although Orcabessa is Spanish for ‘goat’s head’, Fleming probably named his Jamaican home after a British Admiralty plan to defend Gibraltar and stayed at the former donkey’s racecourse for 18 winters, writing four hours a day “fast and with application”.

Noel Coward lived there for a while before moving down the road into Firefly, previously Blue Harbour. He is buried there.

Fleming died in 1964 before the films became popular. At the front gate of Goldeneye there is still a sign reading: “For sale or rent, the birthplace of James Bond, superspy.”

The estate remained vacant until 1976 when music producer Chris Blackwell, the founder of Island Records, bought it. It is now a 400-acre all-inclusive holiday spa resort and part of Blackwell’s Island Outpost chain.

Fleming’s old garage has been converted into a bedroom suite with a giant film screen and massive bar. His bedroom still has the red bullwood desk on which he wrote with the jalousies shut to keep out the sun. There is a typewriter but the original gold-plated one was sold in 1995. Seashells are scattered on tables as he liked them to be. The bath is outside.

Every villa has a signature claw foot bath. The rest of the property consists of super-luxurious three-level villas with glassless windows to let in the breeze and the sound of the pounding surf.

There is a swimming pool, a sunken garden, a tropical wood and a Bizot bar named after “the well-known French music taste-master”.

Jamaica has been used for many Bond movies. Laughing Waters (10 minutes away) is where Ursula Andress (Honeychile Rider) famously came out of the sea. It is now called James Bond Beach.

Capt. Swaby’s Swamp Safari Camp was where Sir Roger Moore hurdled the alligators. The swamps around Falmouth were Dr No’s home. The Queen’s Club in Kingston – the first scene in Dr No – is still there. Naturally, there are Bond location tours.

But Goldeneye (the film named after it came out in 1995) is where it all began. It is a place of pilgrimage as well as hedonism.

Fleming was known locally as “The Commander”, and the man who prophesied he would die of living too much had advice for his in-coming guests. His recipe for a happy life was simple.

“Drink water with your rum. Eat a little red meat but more fish. Swim, fish and keep your drinking, smoking and women in moderation. And at a long distance from your wife.”

And don’t go swimming while the local school’s out and the local shark population is in a feeding frenzy.

You only live once. Go to Goldeneye. You’ll get a warm reception.

www.goldeneye.com