And so to the journey. After a 200 miles night time ’prologue’ down to meet up with Mike, we managed 3 hours sleep before getting up in the car by 4am. The ‘short’ 90 mile drive to the tunnel turned into a longer 110 miles thanks to motorway closures and tortuous diversions through Kent.

Arriving at the terminal we dashed into the shop to get the all important (but useless) beam deflectors and a magnetic GB sticker to slap on the back of the car. We had a slight pang of doubt about the sticker given that it was only ‘tested to 130 mph’ but bought it anyway.
Turned out it was the least of our worries. Here’s a pub quiz question - ‘How much of the rear bodywork of a Bentley Continental GTC is made of steel?’ Answer - discovered with 5 minutes before train left - ‘None’. No matter how hard we tried the GB sign just slid onto the floor. With time running out we resorted to slapping it on the side of the car and thankfully this time it stuck.

The tunnel journey went smoothly and we emerged, having lost an hour, just before 8am, We were greeted by a friendly T-Mobile text welcoming us to France. A slow crawl out of Calais and then onto some clear road. Speeds gradually edged up as we became accustomed to the task in hand and soon the Bentley was thundering across the continent. 8.29 T Mobile welcomed us to Belgium, 10.50 to Netherlands and 11.02 to Germany. The Autobahns had finally been reached!

Now, some words of warning - not all autobahns are ‘derestricted’ (what!?) and many are just two lanes each way for quite long periods. Also, though some may have been built straight as an arrow for use as standby runways by the Luftwaffe, there are still plenty of bends which are pretty hairy taken at anything north of 100mph. Finally, and most importantly, on this day there were 80+ million Germans pootling about their country, every last one of them seemingly oblivious to my need for a completely clear road to achieve my quest of going at least 180mph.

Nevertheless, speeds began to gradually increase, with each gap in the traffic being met with a stronger and more prolonged burst on the accelerator. 120mph, 130mph, 140mph. It soon became noticeable that about 130mph is the fastest most folks drive and with good reason. Covering over 2 miles a minute means you have to scan the horizon for any indication that a car is going to pull out into your lane. Even when they don’t pull out, passing a car by a few feet travelling 50-60mph faster seems plenty fast enough, Danke schön!

But we were here on a mission, no matter how pointless, so we could not rest easy with the masses. First 150mph, then a clear long straight and 160 mph was reached. And how effortlessly it was reached! The sheer power of the Bentley meant the attainment of speed was a purely linear function of how long you had your accelerator foot flat down.

A Mercedes looked to pull out about 400 metres ahead. The Bentley’s brakes went on hard and we had our first reality check. If the Merc had pulled out, we would have ploughed straight through him. OK, a couple of flicks of the windscreen wipers to get rid of any clinging debris and we would have carried on our way, but it was worrying none the less.

Surely 180 mph and beyond seemed just a matter of time - a question of finding a clear enough long straight and we would be there.

But a by product of whistling along at 150+ mph is that you start running out of road. Soon we had only a couple of hundred miles to go and the traffic was beginning to get thicker. We could continue at 130mph but not much quicker. Then an hour out of Munich it began to rain steadily - our chance had gone for the day. We reduced speed to a seemingly sensible 110-120mph and made “BMW Welt” with an hour to spare before the tour.