None of those are remotely guaranteed to tell you the precise location of an unknown BBEG's lair. Do you have some explanation for one of them you think would work really superbly well?
They're useful spells, but they aren't a panacea for finding information. None of them is actually as effective as, for example, finding a map to your target location.
The nice thing about hypotheticals is I don't need to come up with a fully-fleshed adventure off-the-cuff. I can conceive of situations where any or most of those spells, combined with other non-casting information gathering can provide sufficient information to move the situation forward.
Fly lasts 10 minutes. Word of Recall is a 6th level spell, and it takes the caster back to his sanctuary, which helps... how? Planar Binding... what are they binding? What group mount? Planar Binding doesn't do anything useful for them by itself.
Fly is my bad. WoR could act like a teleport back to a locale closer to the end point of the adventure.
Control Weather is an 8th level spell.
You're just grasping at straws at this point.
Longer than a couple hours? For our intrepid heroes? Please. How big is this complex? They'll be in and out in under an hour, just like the time they stole the Frozen Crown from the Dead King on the day of his wedding.
Edit: And they aren't taking a ship, they're taking Cyclops-trained Griffons!
No. Not really though I am away form my books. Look, I can build an adventure that a well-balanced party can do that requires their medium to higher level abilities to pull off. I can adjust that adventure to support a martial-only group. By and large the martial-only group is the only one that specifically requires DM largesse to keep things moving forward. The other class types typically have sufficient breadth to keep momentum going for themselves. Your own example shows that with its convenient potions appropriately stashed for the group to find and use to move to the next stage.
If you run a sandbox playstyle, as I do, then it is up to the PCs to acquire the resources and capabilities that provide success in their adventuring careers. It doesn't mean the PCs can't find and raid the local villain hangout, but the PCs should not expect to find a solution to their problems whilst on the adventure.
This is not a issue 5e suffers in isolation, but 5e does suffer it. In most editions of D&D, there are really three main ways a martial an expand 'sideways': magical items, cohorts/henchmen, and factional support. Of those three methods, two have been offered official support in various editions. 5e offers the least amount of support for these three areas. Magic item collection is deemphasized, cohorts have no mechanical subsystems, and no version of D&D has offered factional support (though many DMs do).