Chasing the 24-hour world record for most countries visited by land

A different route through the same 18

Phil Billingham's team started in Poland in 2014 and stopped for photos in every country on their way to the Netherlands. They reached 18 countries by land within 24 hours, setting RecordSetter's world record.

I started with Billingham's published country order. The road model puts that trip at 24 h 54 min. Starting in the Netherlands and rearranging the same 18 countries brings it down to 24 h 38 min, a saving of 16 minutes on the same model.

To see how the estimates held up on the road, I compared the reported times through 17 countries on 2 earlier runs with estimates for those country orders. The teams took about 3% less time than the model estimated, on average. Billingham's 2014 run and Hepworth's 2012 run.

If that difference held for the new 18-country route, it would take 23 h 49 min, with about 11 minutes to spare. I budgeted 2 minutes per visit to stand in the country and document it, as RecordSetter requires.

Billingham credited quiet roads and clear border crossings. A crew can scout legal places to pull over before it sets out. Once the clock starts, even a short border queue could use up that margin. Stroke Association report on the run.

The route to 19 heads south

Adding a country changes the whole trip. The best route I found through 19 drops Romania and Poland, then heads south through North Macedonia, Bulgaria, and Greece. That route takes 27 h 47 min in the model and 26 h 52 min even with the historical adjustment.

That leaves nearly 3 hours to find even after the adjustment. The route through 18 gives a crew a way to test the plan.

What if you had another day?

I could have set the clock at 24 hours and looked for the most countries that fit. Instead I turned the question around. If I want to visit exactly 18 countries, what's the quickest trip I can find? What about 19? For each count I tried swapping countries in and out and rearranging their order. I compared the resulting trips by road time, including the time to stop in each country.

Each dot below is the quickest trip I found for that country count. Read across from the dashed lines to see how many countries fit. By the unadjusted estimates, 17 fit in 24 hours and 25 fit in 48.

The 26-country route on the map goes from Andorra to Greece. It takes 48 h 51 min in the model, 51 minutes past the 48-hour cutoff.

Drop the deadline and you get another question. How long does it take to visit all 41 countries on my list? The route goes from Armenia to Finland in about 163 h in the model. That includes the car train to and from the United Kingdom and a walk into Vatican City.

Compare the 3 routes on the map to see how much the route changes as you give it more time.