Karl Bushby, 57, was embraced by his mother, Angela, outside her terraced house in Hull, northern England, on Monday. A banner reading “Welcome Home Son” hung above them as hundreds of supporters cheered in the city center before he made the final stretch home.

28-Year Journey Completed

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” Bushby joked to the crowd. “Is that it, is it done?”

Bushby began his Goliath Expedition in Punta Arenas, southern Chile, in November 1998. He traveled with a tent, a few hundred dollars, and a cheap plastic camera. His goal was to return to his home city by an unbroken route, without using any motorized transport to advance his journey.

The route took him north through the Americas, across the ice of the Bering Strait from Alaska to Russia, and onwards through Mongolia and China. He swam across the Caspian Sea before continuing towards Europe. Along the way, he negotiated the dense jungle of the Darien Gap between Colombia and Panama, was detained after entering Russia, and faced repeated visa and funding problems.

Obstacles and Delays

The global financial crisis in 2008 cost him major sponsors, adding to delays that stretched what he had expected to be a 12-year journey into 28 years. Last month, he swam across the English Channel, clearing the last major obstacle before beginning the final walk home.

“They say it takes a village, but literally it took a world to get me here,” he said as he arrived in Hull. “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 feature-length documentary about his journey is in production, while Bushby plans to begin a speaking tour around England in the coming weeks.

Personal and Physical Challenges

Bushby, a former paratrooper, began his adventure in Chile aged 29 after a marriage breakup that saw his wife return to Northern Ireland with their son. During the trip, he crossed an iced-over Bering Strait from Alaska to Russia with French explorer Dimitri Kieffer in 2006 — nearly losing his life in the process. Returning to Britain early last month, he swam the English Channel from northern France to Dover over four days.

He interrupted, or was forced to pause, his journey several times, including when he was refused a visa by Russia, which caused a journey originally planned to take 12 years to last more than double that time. He also spent some jail time in Panama for entering the country without a visa.

The COVID-19 pandemic also caused delays, and he spent some time living at a base in Mexico. But he always resumed the trek at the exact spot where he had left off.

The famous German filmmaker Werner Herzog is making a feature-length documentary about the journey entitled “Walk of Life.”

In an interview with the AFP news agency from northern France in September, Bushby expressed apprehension about returning to a more normal life back in Britain. “I’ve got to try and get established in the grown-up world again,” he said.

On his trip, he obeyed two rules: to avoid all forms of motorized transport to advance; and not to return until he had finished what he had set out to do.

A very final leg of his journey was to take him to north Hull, where he was to reunite with his mother, Angela, his 36-year-old son, Adam, and a 12-year-old granddaughter he had never met.