Karl Bushby expects to reach his Hull doorstep by Monday after 28 years on foot.
The former British paratrooper, 56, left the tip of South America on November 1, 1998, as a man not yet 30. He returns to a country he barely recognizes, having pushed a cart through 28 nations and across more than 30,000 miles of terrain that nearly killed him several times over.
His final approach to British soil came by water, not by the footpath he had wanted. Bushby had sought permission to walk through the Channel Tunnel, but that request was blocked. Instead he swam the English Channel across three days, logging more than 20 hours in the water before he could finally stand on a British beach earlier this month.
Bushby said: “[It] feels good to have UK soil under my feet after all these years. It hasn’t been easy, and that’s part of the point; proving I’m more capable than I give myself credit for.”
He added: “All of us can accomplish more than we will ever imagine.”
HM Coastguard confirmed it had “liaised with French authorities and maritime sector partners to ensure safety protocols were met” for the crossing, though the agency had no role in the earlier tunnel decision that forced Bushby into the water.
The journey that began when Bill Clinton was in the White House has outlasted wars, governments, and global crises. Bushby survived a polar bear attack that nearly ended his life, a mob assault in Peru, a helicopter rescue from some other peril, and the years-long paralysis of the Coronavirus pandemic that stranded walkers and closed borders worldwide. Through it all he pushed a cart loaded with camping gear, sleeping where he could, walking when he could not.
Now the machinery of ordinary life awaits him, and Bushby has been frank about the psychological weight of that transition. He said his “purpose and reason for living is about to end” and that his next test would be adjusting to “a society that you just don’t know anymore.” The man who measured his days in miles and borders must learn to measure them in hours and routines he did not choose.
The arithmetic of his trek carries its own small irony. If he arrives Monday as planned, he will have been traveling exactly 28 years and one day. He was not yet 30 when he started; now he is in his mid-50s, with more than half his adult life spent in motion across four continents.
Bushby started walking at the southernmost reach of the Americas with no guarantee he would ever see the Humber again. The cart became his constant companion, his shelter, his burden. The polar bear, the mob, the helicopter rescue, the pandemic lockdowns — each could have stopped him permanently. None did.
What awaits in Hull is not merely rest but recalibration. The Premier League fixtures will roll on without him. The tigers of his hometown, as he has joked, will maul visiting football clubs while he tries to learn what it means to stay in one place. The cup of tea and biscuit he has surely imagined for thousands of miles will finally arrive, and with them the harder task of stillness.
Bushby is scheduled to complete his walk and arrive in Hull on Monday.