Karl Bushby completes 28-year walk around the world, returns to Hull

British adventurer Karl Bushby arrived in Hull on Monday after walking across four continents for 28 years. The 57-year-old was met by a cheering crowd of about 500 people in the northeastern English city. His journey covered 50,000 kilometers (31,000 miles) and began in the far south of South America in 1998.

A journey of endurance and rules

Bushby followed two strict rules: he avoided all forms of motorized transport to advance, and he would not return until he finished what he set out to do. The final leg brought him to north Hull to reunite with his mother Angela, his son Adam, 36, and a 12-year-old granddaughter he had never met. A former paratrooper, Bushby began the adventure in Chile at age 29 after his marriage broke up and his wife returned to Northern Ireland with their son.

The journey included crossing the iced-over Bering Strait from Alaska to Russia with French explorer Dimitri Kieffer in 2006, nearly costing him his life. He returned to Britain early last month and swam the English Channel from northern France to Dover over four days. The trek was interrupted several times, including a visa refusal by Russia, jail time in Panama for entering without a visa, and delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. He always resumed at the exact spot where he had left off.

German filmmaker Werner Herzog is making a feature-length documentary about the walk, entitled “Walk of Life.” In an interview in northern France in September, Bushby expressed apprehension about returning to normal life. “I’ve got to try and get established in the grown-up world again,” he said.