Former British Army paratrooper Karl Bushby arrived home in Hull after 28 years of continuous walking. He had set out from Punta Arenas in southern Chile in November 1998 at age 29, with two strict rules: use no motorised transport to advance the journey, and do not return home until the walk was finished. He covered roughly 31,000 miles (50,000 km) across four continents and about 29 countries, becoming the first person to complete an unbroken continuous walk of this kind back to his starting region.
Bushby, now 57, pushed a loaded handcart nicknamed “The Beast” through jungles, deserts, mountains, and frozen seas. Key stretches included navigating the Darién Gap while contending with armed groups, making the first recorded east-to-west foot crossing of the Bering Strait in 2006 with French adventurer Dimitri Kieffer, swimming the Caspian Sea (roughly 180 miles over about a month), and swimming the English Channel in early October 2026 after being unable to cross on foot through the tunnel. Visa delays, geopolitics, funding issues, and the pandemic stretched what he expected to be a roughly 12-year trip into nearly three decades. Only a portion of that time was spent actively walking.
He crossed the misty Humber Bridge into East Yorkshire on November 1st, then received a civic welcome the next day in Queen Victoria Square outside Hull City Hall, where hundreds of people gathered. The Lord Mayor and local MP Karl Turner greeted him; Turner read a message of congratulations from Prime Minister Andy Burnham praising his determination. Bushby told the crowd the reception was unlike anything he had imagined and that “it took a world to get me here”, from the kindness of strangers to nation-states. Filmmaker Werner Herzog and a crew were present for a documentary on the expedition.
The final stretch ended at his mother Angela’s terraced house in Hull’s Sutton Park area, which he had left in 1998. She greeted him with the question “Where have you been?” He replied, in essence, that it had been 28 years, and the two embraced amid cameras and well-wishers. He was also reunited with his son Adam, now 36 (who was eight when Bushby left), and met his 12-year-old granddaughter for the first time in person. Adam has described the situation as surreal, with mixed emotions after limited contact over the years, while still expressing pride in the achievement. Bushby has said he has no regrets and that the expedition worked as planned; he intends to stay in Hull for a while as he adjusts.
The walk tested endurance through extreme terrain, border bureaucracy, and personal cost. Bushby has described long periods of walking as boring and the family separation as creating inevitable distance. At the same time, many have framed the homecoming as a story of grit, the support of people along the way, and a rare, continuous, human-powered circumnavigation-style journey completed on his own terms. Reports from outlets including The Guardian, Associated Press, BBC, and others document the arrival and the scale of the effort.
Now it’s time for a cup of tea!
