The key facts

  • Karl Bushby, 57, is walking home to Hull after 28 years and 36,000 miles without using transport
  • Karl Bushby, 57, is walking home to Hull after 28 years and 36,000 miles of travel without using transport
  • Of the 28 years on foot, only about 15 were spent walking: the rest went on visas, geopolitics and pandemic restrictions
  • In Hull he will meet his 12-year-old granddaughter for the first time — he has never seen her
  • In Hull, he will meet for the first time his 12-year-old granddaughter, whom he has never seen

The final stage of a 28-year route

Former paratrooper Karl Bushby, now 57, is just a few miles from his home city of Hull. In 1998, at the age of 29, he set out from Punta Arenas in Chile, setting himself two rules: not to return to the UK until the journey was complete, and not to use any transport to make progress. According to BBC News, he has walked some 36,000 miles across four continents: he battled through the jungles of the Darién Gap, crossed the frozen Bering Strait in 2006, and a few weeks ago swam the English Channel and landed at Dover.

The road and its costs

A BBC correspondent joined Bushby in rural Lincolnshire, where, just a couple of miles in, his heavy supply cart, 'The Beast', got a puncture. The traveller himself describes the daily grind of the journey in prosaic terms: punctures, finding somewhere to do laundry, rain and endless miles — 'it's not as glamorous as it looks'. Of the 28 years, he says, only about 15 were actually spent walking: the rest went on visa paperwork, 'dealing with geopolitics' and delays caused by Covid-19 pandemic restrictions. Between stages he lived for long stretches in Mexico, where costs are low. By the very rules of his route he could not return to the UK to his family; he occasionally met his son and parents in third countries.

What awaits at home — and after

At the end of the journey Bushby will be met by his 36-year-old son Adam, a 12-year-old granddaughter he has never seen, his father and brothers; his mother will be waiting at the gate of the childhood home he left 28 years ago. He himself says he is bracing not for the finish line but for an identity crisis: 'Everything I am will go away... I'll have to work out all over again who I am.' American long-distance walker Angela Maxwell, who walked with him from Dover, believes he misses not the walking but the mission and purpose. The journey, he says, has also left him encounters: 'I met the best in people... without the world I would never have done that.' Before the sponsors and the book deal, he insists, he was a penniless backpacker living on handouts and food thrown away by the roadside.

Why this matters

Bushby's story is striking not only for the scale of the route but for its price: details he himself has confirmed — 13 years off the road because of visas and the pandemic, a broken marriage, family ties grown distant — show that an 'unthinkable journey' is made up of long periods of waiting, not just crossings of the Bering Strait. The end of the route also changes his status: a man who, by his own rules, could not cross the UK border for 28 years is now returning to his family, including a granddaughter born during his absence.

Karl Bushby, wearing a fleece and shorts, pushes a handcart along a fast rural road. An orange hi-vis bib is attached to the front of the cart.Image source, Kevin Shoesmith/BBC
Image caption,

Karl Bushby bears down on Hull, with his heavy duty gear trolley 'The Beast'

Karl Bushby, with a thick beard covered in snow and ice. He has a hood up.Image source, Karl Bushby
Image caption,

Karl Bushby crossed the Bering Strait in 2006

A man in a mustard coloured fleece and shirt sits by the roadside repairing a punctured tyre on his handcart. The cart is laden with essential equipment.Image source, Kevin Shoesmith/BBC
Image caption,

Bushby makes a roadside repair after his handcart sustains a puncture in Lincolnshire

A distance shot showing a man in a wetsuit wading out of the English Channel, the white cliffs of Dover in the background. Five people are on the sand to greet him.Image source, Karl Bushby
Image caption,

Bushby emerges from the English Channel near Dover

A black and white image of British paratroopers marching with rifles.Image source, Karl Bushby
Image caption,

Bushby, pictured centre, at the start of his 12-year Parachute Regiment career

Karl Bushby, then in his late 20s, walking along a steep mountain dirt track.Image source, Karl Bushby
Image caption,

He set off from Chile on 1 November 1998

A woman with light brown hair stands clutching a black wrought iron gate in front of a terraced home.Image source, Kevin Shoesmith/BBC
Image caption,

Bushby's mother, Angela, will be waiting for him at the gate to the home where she raised him

A person in light-coloured expedition clothing, a wide-brimmed hat and dark sunglasses stands in the opening of a crumbling stone wall in a dry, desert-like landscape. Beside the wall is a two-wheeled cart carrying a large white box covered with Union Jack flags and the words “Goliath Expedition”, while several tall cactus plants rise from the scrub-covered ground under a clear blue sky.A man wearing a green camouflaged poncho, a baseball cap and boots walks along a wet road, pushing a two-wheeled trolley containing all of his possessions.Global adventurer Karl Bushby places his arm on the shoulder of the BBC's Kevin ShoesmithA bespectacled woman with greying light brown hair rests her hands on a wrought iron gate in front of her home. The photo is taken at night, with light coming from the living room behind her.A man in an orange and black wetsuit poses for a photo on a beach with the sea behind him.