European driving can be fun and we've been known to lap up a few miles ourselves in preference to bumping along on British Roads. But aiming to cover 12 countries in one day just sounds like madness.
That's what journalist Simon Heptinstall and photographer Adrian Sherratt set out to do though. They hauled around in a BMW 745i and managed to do the dozen countries in 19 hours 40 minutes.
Beginning in Folkestone the pair drove through France, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Austria, Italy and Slovenia before finally ending their journey in Croatia. And although they covered a massive 1,145 miles, their record-breaking journey still left them with more than four hours to spare, according to the summer edition of BMW Magazine
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Simon Heptinstall said: "Forget the backpacker’s view of travel that dominates guidebooks, this is the only way to do it, by luxury limousine. I’d been working towards this project for years, starting with a trip across six countries on my own, then through 10 countries in a day for a feature for The Times three years ago. But that trip was beset with problems including map reading disasters, alpine blizzards and even a head-on collision with a mountain fox
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Simon was convinced that he could do 12 countries this time with careful planning, a good co-driver and blagging a top of the range motor from BMW.
"On arrival in Croatia we were greeted as if we’d conquered Everest. My only reservation was a nagging thought that in those four remaining hours we could have driven across Croatia and reached Bosnia, adding country number 13 to the tally
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