A “Welcome Home Son” banner hung over the pavement outside a modest row house in Hull on Monday as Karl Bushby threw his arms around his tearful mother, Angela, completing a walk he started 28 years earlier. The 57-year-old former British paratrooper arrived at his childhood home on foot, having travelled roughly 50,000km (31,070 miles) across four continents without a single ride forward, Al Jazeera reported.
The Card From His Father That Started the Walk
The journey traces back to a card from Bushby’s father, Keith, himself an Army veteran, passing along a debate among special forces friends over whether a man could walk from London to New York by way of the Bering land bridge, news.com.au reported. Bushby, who spent 12 years with the 3rd Battalion of the Parachute Regiment, left the Army in late 1997 after a divorce and set two unbreakable rules: no vehicle could carry him forward, and he could not go home until his own feet got him there.
At 29, he flew from a Royal Air Force base outside Oxford to the bottom of South America and began walking from Punta Arenas, Chile, on Nov. 1, 1998, reportedly carrying less than $1,000, news.com.au reported. Al Jazeera describes his kit slightly differently: a tent, a few hundred dollars and a cheap plastic camera. He pegged the trip at roughly five years. “We suspected that it was 12 years plus,” he said. “Never in our wildest dreams would we ever have imagined 28 years.”
Surviving Extreme Natural Hazards
Mother Nature threw everything at him. In 2001 he slipped past armed conflict in the Darién Gap, the roadless jungle linking the Americas, only to land behind bars in Panama for 18 days after wandering into a restricted border zone, news.com.au reported. In 2006, he and American adventurer Dimitri Kieffer tackled the 90-kilometre frozen Bering Strait. They were rescued by air, regrouped, then faced a polar bear, nearly drowned in frigid water and almost lost their sleds to the sea. Their reward was an arrest in Russia for illegal entry and a deportation threat.
BREAKING: Karl Bushby has arrived home in Hull after his 28-year journey walking around the world, covering 30,000 miles from the starting point in Chile. He tells crowds: "There has never been quite a welcome home like this, I'm sure."https://t.co/yVtSMLUA99 📺 Sky 501 pic.twitter.com/ydf2xNqWcS
His roughest stretches, he told the New York Post: “the Darien Gap and Alaska.” His favourite scenery was in South America, especially Colombia, Chile and the Atacama Desert.
Paperwork Ate Nearly a Decade
But paperwork, not peril, proved his toughest foe, news.com.au reported. Russia consumed nearly ten years as visa headaches piled up and weather allowed only a few months of walking a year. After Moscow denied him a visa in 2012, he walked from Los Angeles to the Russian Embassy in Washington as a form of protest, a move that ultimately secured him the necessary documents. The Kremlin then hit him with a five-year entry ban in 2013, forcing a detour through Mongolia and China, a weeks-long swim across the Caspian Sea to Baku and a push into Europe last year.
Al Jazeera adds that the 2008 global financial crisis cost him major sponsors, stretching what he expected to be a 12-year journey into 28 years.
The Last Hurdle Was Water
The Channel Tunnel’s operator refused his request to walk its service passage, so the self-described weak swimmer dove in. On Oct. 5, after roughly 20 hours in the water across a three-day period, he made his way onto Shakespeare Beach south of Dover, where his father and brothers were waiting on the shore, news.com.au reported. He had cleared the crossing with French and British officials and both coast guards beforehand. “It feels good to have UK soil under my feet after all these years,” he told the New York Post. “It hasn’t been easy, and that’s part of the point.”
Karl Bushby has arrived home in Hull after walking 30,000 miles over the last 28 years. He set off from southern Chile in 1998, aged 28, promising to walk all the way home. Sky's @ShingiMararike caught up with Karl as he headed home to see his mumhttps://t.co/0ZdrgsUYse pic.twitter.com/FYvZpA39By
Hull Packs the Square for the Homecoming
On Sunday, Bushby made his way across the Humber Bridge into East Yorkshire, where he was met by his father, his brothers, his 36-year-old son Adam, and his 12-year-old granddaughter—whom he was seeing for the first time—the BBC reported. On Monday, at approximately 11am, he arrived at Queen Victoria Square in central Hull, where a civic ceremony had drawn hundreds of people. “I’m back,” he said. “This is absolute madness.” “Sorry to keep you waiting,” he joked. “Is it, is it done?”
“They say it takes a village but literally it took a world to get me here,” he told the crowd, news.com.au reported. “The kindness of strangers, so many, from individuals to nation states, to get me back here today. I didn’t do this alone. There was a big team. The biggest team. Earth.”
A Son Who Barely Knows Him
When Bushby left, Adam was 8. Adam, now living in Belfast with a family of his own, told the Yorkshire Post the return “doesn’t seem real.” A few weeks before finishing, Bushby said: “There’s distance between us, and we need to patch that up, and move on.” Angela, who had not laid eyes on her son in a decade, kept his saga in scrapbooks at the Sutton Park house; he is expected to move back in with her. “Karl has always been headstrong,” she told the BBC.
He has no regrets. “It worked, so no, I wouldn’t change a thing,” he told the New York Post. After three decades of strangers feeding and sheltering him, his takeaway is simple: “People are amazing, despite what we think the world looks like. Humanity is worth the effort.” A feature-length documentary about the journey is in production and Bushby plans a speaking tour around England, Al Jazeera reported.
Did you know? The entire expedition began with a postcard: Keith Bushby’s debate card about walking London to New York via the ancient Bering land bridge.
Questions Readers Ask About Bushby’s 28-Year Walk
Al Jazeera puts the distance at about 50,000km (31,070 miles), across jungles, frozen seas and international borders on four continents.
'I'm going to miss it' Adventurer Karl Bushby spoke to #BBCBreakfast as he arrives home in Hull after a 28-year journey that started in South America, following two self-imposed rules – not to use transport to advance and not to return home until the journey is complete… pic.twitter.com/AUZ61svqdr
Visa delays in Russia alone consumed nearly a decade, a 2013 five-year entry ban forced detours through Mongolia, China and a Caspian Sea swim, and the 2008 financial crisis cost him major sponsors, Al Jazeera reported.
Did he really never use a vehicle? Correct — his two rules were that no motorised transport could carry him forward and he could not return home until his feet did, and he finished on foot across the Humber Bridge into Hull.
After 28 years, 30 countries and more than 30,000 miles on foot, Karl Bushby has completed his epic odyssey around the world, returning home to Hull, England. Bushby says the kindness of strangers and the human spirit carried him through the challenges of his journey, which began… pic.twitter.com/YkkwT6gIHo
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